Chapter 4

Glenda reading the name out loud didn't settle anything that Saturday. It only moved the fight to a bigger desk.

Twyla said the certificate proved a man had signed a paper, not that any grounds were owed to a cleanup girl, and she wasn't wrong about the second half of that.

So Rosetta made two phone calls over the weekend, and Monday morning they all sat in the county probate attorney's office on the town square.

Harlan Pruett had kept the Weyburn family papers since before his own father retired from the firm.

His office smelled of lemon polish and the fine dust that lives inside law books.

He came in with a single page sealed in a plastic sleeve and set it down like it might bruise.

"This was deposited with us twenty-six years ago by Elbert Weyburn," he said. "Notarized the same week. It's a codicil to his will."

"We settled Dad's estate six years back," Orville said. "There wasn't any such paper."

"There was," Pruett said. "It sat in a sealed file my father closed before he retired, filed in with Elbert's old deeds instead of the estate. When the estate opened, the clerk pulled the estate file and never pulled that one. That was this office's mistake, and I'll say so in front of the board. But an executor is required to bring every testamentary document forward. Both of you signed as executors."

He looked at them over his glasses and let the rest go unsaid.

Dell Prewitt had driven in as the board's vice chair, to witness on behalf of the association.

He leaned over the sleeve and read it without touching the page, and Merritt watched his face change line by line.

"Read the part that matters, Harlan," Rosetta said.

Pruett read it. "'The Weyburn County Fairgrounds shall pass to any child of my son Ansel's blood, should such a child ever be found.'"

For a moment nobody breathed.

Rosetta's hand tightened on the arm of her chair. "He never told me he wrote it," she said, almost to herself. "He grieved that boy in private and left me out of it."

Merritt kept her palms flat on her knees so they wouldn't shake.

She had driven to Indiana to find a grandmother, not a deed, and she wanted that true somewhere, even if only inside her own head.

"That is a twenty-six-year-old wish from a heartbroken old man," Twyla said. "It isn't enforceable. We'll contest every word."

"You're free to try," Pruett said. "But understand what you'd be contesting. He wrote this the month Ansel died. It's dated. If a court finds the executors knew of a codicil and buried it through probate, this stops being a family quarrel."

He waited before he said the word.

"That's concealment. Possibly fraud on the estate. That part isn't mine to pursue. It belongs to the county attorney."

Dell Prewitt sat back slowly.

"I signed off on that probate as a board officer," he said. "On your word, the two of you. You told the whole board there was no heir and no paper to find."

"Dell," Twyla started.

"I believed you once," he said. "I won't be the fool who believed you twice."

Orville's chair creaked as he leaned forward. "That paper doesn't pay the note that comes due in November. Somebody in this room better be thinking about who signed for it."

Dell turned to Pruett. "The board will want the original on the table Tuesday, in front of everyone, read out loud. I'll call the meeting myself."

Pruett nodded. "I can have it authenticated and ready by then. These things move in days, not minutes. Tuesday afternoon."

Twyla stood so fast her chair scraped the floor.

Merritt saw the fear under the anger, the face of a woman watching the only ground she'd ever stood on start to slide out from under her.

"I have run these grounds for twenty years," Twyla said. "Every gate, every barn, every burnt-out bulb. I will padlock the whole place before I hand it to a girl who shovels manure for nine dollars an hour."

She had her phone out and was already dialing before she reached the door.