Chapter 2

Cassie got home at 4:30, her co-op jacket still smelling of feed dust. She saw the orange paper on the door before she saw Walter. She read it twice. Then she read it a third time.

“Grandpa.”

“In here.”

He was at the kitchen table with the phone flat in front of him. The green three-ring binder sat beside it, closed. On the cover, in his block letters: BELL STREET.

She sat down. “They can’t do this. You’ve lived here sixty years. You were born in this house.”

“Your great-grandfather built it,” Walter said. “I was born in the front room. Your mother learned to walk on that porch.”

Cassie pulled the phone toward her. “Show me.”

He played the clip again. Forty-one seconds. Deke on the porch, never inside. The man in the Kubiak jacket on the sidewalk. Deke’s voice: “Tell Ray this one’s clean by spring.”

Cassie’s jaw tightened. “That’s Ray Kubiak. Kubiak Construction. They did the driveway at the co-op.”

Walter nodded. “They also bought 210 and 206.”

Cassie opened her laptop. The county property records were public, if you knew where to look. She found 202 Bell Street first. Condemned in October. Sold to Kubiak Construction in November. Then 210, condemned November 12, sold December 30. Then 206, condemned December 3, sold January 9. All three empty lots. All three Kubiak signs.

“They’re buying the whole block,” she said.

Walter didn’t answer. He opened the green binder. Inside were tabs for every house on Bell Street. Receipts. Repair dates. Photographs. Notes in his precise handwriting. Twenty years of keeping track, because nobody else did.

“We need a lawyer,” Cassie said.

“Maybe.”

“Maybe? Grandpa, they’re going to tear down your house.”

Walter looked at the order. “The form says Deke inspected the inside on January sixteenth at two fifteen. The camera says he was on the porch for forty-one seconds. He never opened the door.”

Cassie stared. “So he lied.”

“Yes.”

“Then we take that to the county. We take it to the board. We-”

The phone rang. Walter answered. It was the county annex. A clerk asked if he was Walter Prine of 214 Bell Street. He said he was. The clerk said there was a question about his appeal.

Walter’s hand went still. “What appeal?”

“The one filed January fourteenth,” the clerk said. “Two days before the inspection. It’s already on the docket.”

Walter looked at Cassie. She had gone pale.

“I didn’t file an appeal,” Walter said.

The clerk paused. Papers shuffled. “That’s strange, Mr. Prine. It says right here it was filed by you.”