Chapter 3

For four days I didn't say a word to the Bellamys.

My mother took Wren in the mornings so I could keep my appointments - a spinet on Water Street, a baby grand in the Lutheran parish hall, a piano at the funeral home that hadn't been tuned since before anybody's pandemic. I worked. I came home. I fed the baby. I sat in my old room and listened to my father sand something out in the garage.

Grant called eleven times the first day and twice the second, and then he stopped, which frightened me more.

Audrey called every day. I let it ring, and I listened to the voicemails later with the phone against my ear, standing at my mother's sink. Sweetheart, is everything all right? Honey, Gerald's had that house on his mind for months now. Call me back, please.

Months.

On Friday I called the bank and asked them to read me the ledger again, slowly, and I wrote down every line. Eleven payments. Four missed. And then, three days before the anniversary dinner, a payment of four thousand dollars in cash, made at the branch counter.

"Who made it?"

"Cash doesn't carry a name," the girl said. "But the receipt's initialed. G.B."

G.B.

Then I called Ostrowski Realty and asked for Marnie.

She was friendly, which told me she didn't know anything.

"Beautiful house," she said. "Buyer's walked it twice."

"Has he."

"Both times he asked about that black walnut in the side yard."

"What did he ask?"

"Whether it's sound," Marnie said. "Isn't that a funny thing to care about?"

That afternoon I drove past Chestnut Street. Grant's truck was in the driveway. The porch light was on - the one I leave on for him when he's running late - and I sat at the corner with my blinker going and did not turn in.

I sat in my parents' driveway with the phone in my lap.

G.B. The walnut. Months.