Chapter 7

The Bellamys' kitchen smelled like coffee and toast. The wall phone hung by the refrigerator, the Formica table was wiped clean, and on the counter by the breadbox sat a folder with a label in Gerald's block capitals.

WREN'S HOUSE.

I set the serving dish down and looked at it a second before I touched it.

"You want coffee?" Audrey said from the stove.

"In a minute."

I opened the folder.

I had braced myself for collusion. What I found was a payment schedule in Gerald's handwriting, worked out in pencil, three columns: what he'd pay, what the taxes would run, what he'd set aside for a new furnace. Under it, a line that read: no rent, not a cent, until Grant's crew is steady.

And under that, on its own line, in the same block capitals:

KEEP THE WALNUT. SHE'LL WANT THE WALNUT.

I stood in that kitchen and could not move.

"What is it?" Audrey said.

I took the practice page and the loan document out of the diaper bag and laid them on the Formica side by side, the way I'd laid the page on my own tablecloth nine days earlier.

She came over with the coffeepot still in her hand. She read the practice page. She read the loan document with the red stamp across the top. Then she read the practice page again, and she set the pot down, and she said, very quietly:

"That's my son's hand."

Gerald came in from the garage in his cardigan. Audrey turned the loan document toward him without a word.

He read it. He took off his bifocals and set them on the table, and he stood there a moment with his hand flat on the paper. Then he said, "Audrey. The four thousand."

Her face changed. "Three days before the dinner. He asked me for four thousand dollars. He said it was for the crew's insurance."

I thought of the initials on the ledger. G.B.

"Not you," I said.

"No, honey," Audrey said. "Not me."

Gerald picked up the wall phone, dialed from memory, and pressed the speaker button so we could all hear it ring.

"Marnie? Gerald Bellamy. Chestnut Street is off the market. Cancel Monday's closing."

Eleven words. I counted them without meaning to.

Then headlights swept across the kitchen wall - a truck turning into the driveway, too fast for the ice.