The PI brought the file on a Thursday. I’m gonna tell you what was in it. But I need to tell you how we got there first, because without the first part the second part doesn’t make sense — or maybe it makes too much sense and that’s the problem.
Grandma Evelyn Hargrove was 89 years old and she lived in a white Victorian on Jones Street in Savannah’s Historic District.
She’d lived there for 41 years. She had a rental property on Tybee Island that she bought in 1987 and rented out every summer. She had three investment accounts that her late husband Wallace had set up in the 1990s before the Alzheimer’s took him.
By the time she died, the estate was worth $4.1 million.
She had four grandchildren. Me — Diane, I’m 63, retired school librarian — and my brother Preston, 58, who sells commercial real estate in Charleston. My sister Colette, 55, who teaches at a Montessori school in Atlanta.
And my youngest cousin on my father’s side, Darren, who I won’t get into for reasons I’ll get to. Grandma called us all her “reading girls and her Preston,” because she always made us read growing up, including Preston who hated it and I think she knew that.
She was diagnosed with congestive heart failure in February of 2025. Not unexpected.
She was 89. But it moved faster than anyone thought it would, and by March she was in Magnolia House Hospice on Liberty Street, about 11 blocks from Jones Street.
Okay. Here’s the part I have to say.
None of us moved down there.
I’m not going to dress it up.
I was in Savannah myself for six days in April when Grandma first went into Magnolia House. I helped organize her room. I brought her a framed photo of Biscuit the cat — she loved Biscuit — and I brought her three audiobooks and a big-print crossword book.
I stayed six days. Then I drove back to my apartment and told myself I’d come back the following month. I didn’t come back for seven weeks.
The story doesn’t end here — it continues on the next page.
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