Chapter 9

Dale Prescott was a round man in a good coat who had no idea what kind of morning he'd walked into. He had a briefcase and a stamp and a little logbook, and he was very sorry, he said, to hear about Mr. Tilden, and he was happy to wait.

He did not wait long.

Corinne got there first. She came out of the house with her hair straightened and a cup of coffee and the folder tucked under her arm, and she met Mr. Prescott in the dooryard like a woman who had simply been up since five.

"You must be Dale," she said. "Come in out of the cold."

"Ma," Seth said from the door.

"Come in." She smiled. "We'll just get this done and then we'll talk about poor Glen."

Ms. Provost was in the kitchen with her phone and her pad and her tote bag. She watched Corinne put the folder on the table and open it and pull out a pen.

"It's just one signature," Corinne said, holding the pen out to me. "Family member consent. It doesn't mean anything, Josie. It's a formality. Glen wanted the timber gone-he told me so, before."

I was standing in the kitchen with the walkie-talkie in my apron pocket and my elbow bandaged and my son behind me in the doorway, where he had no business being, in his pajamas and his mother's boots.

"Take the pen," Corinne said.

"No."

"It's four inches of ink."

"No."

Seth stepped out of the mudroom and stood in the doorway to the hall, blocking it.

He didn't say anything. He didn't have to. He was blocking the way to the front door and everybody in the room understood it, including Ms. Provost, whose hand had gone very still on her pad, and including Mr. Prescott, who was starting to look at the folder and then at Corinne and then at the folder again.

"Everything all right here?" Mr. Prescott said.

"Sign it," Corinne said.

"No."

She took my hand and folded the pen into it and closed my fingers around it and pushed my hand down toward the page, and I let her, and I let the pen touch the paper, and then I took my hand back and stepped away and put my back against the wall.

"It's over," I said. "Ms. Provost, would you tell him what's in the folder."

Corinne turned.

And Sheriff Nolan came up the front steps.

I didn't hear the car. I heard the screen door, and a man's voice saying, "Morning," and then boots, and then a brown uniform and a gray mustache in the kitchen doorway, and the room got very small.

"Afternoon," the sheriff said, and looked around. "So. Which one of you is Corinne Tilden?"

Nobody said anything.

The sheriff looked at Ms. Provost and Ms. Provost looked at the folder and the sheriff came over and looked at the folder, and then he looked at Corinne, and then he looked at me and the toy in my pocket and my son in the doorway in his pajamas.

"I got a call about a caregiver situation," he said. "And then I got a call about a forged signature. Which is it."

"Both," I said.

Corinne started talking. She was very good. She was so good that for a second, standing there in my own kitchen with an ice pack on my arm, I almost believed her. The girl was unstable. The girl was pregnant and exhausted and she'd attacked her. The girl stole morphine from an old man and now she was making up stories.

Sheriff Nolan listened to all of it.

Then he said, "Ma'am, I'd like to hear what's on the tape."

I put the walkie-talkie on the kitchen table.

I pressed the button.

It was weaker now, so weak you had to lean in, and everybody leaned in, Ms. Provost and Mr. Prescott and the sheriff and Seth against the doorframe with his jaw set and Corinne with her hands flat on the table. Micah came and stood in front of me, facing them, his back pressed against my legs, because he was five and he understood better than any of them that I needed someone between me and the room.

"...she's stealing his meds-I caught her..."

"...let her fall..."

"...hide those packs, buddy..."

"...you tell her Mama had the pills..."

The light died in the middle of Seth's sentence.

The room stayed quiet for a long time.

Then Sheriff Nolan took off his hat and said, "Mrs. Tilden, I'm going to need you to sit down."

And Corinne sat down.