Chapter 4

Nobody spoke for a long moment.

The woodstove ticked.

The green beans had gone cold on every plate.

"What will?" Josie said.

Peg folded the towel and set it on the counter rail.

"Your grandfather's," she said.

"Lloyd's."

"He had two copies drawn up."

"One went to his lawyer down in Bloomfield."

"The other he gave me to keep."

Cody laughed once.

"That's crazy," he said.

"Grandpa died eight years ago."

"Nobody ever said a word about any-"

"Be quiet, Cody," Ruth said.

"You're fired," Diane said to Peg.

"Pack your desk Monday morning."

Peg didn't blink.

"I've been fired every spring for thirty years," she said.

"The raises never came anyway."

Ray stood.

"Key," he said.

Peg took her coat off the hook.

She walked out the kitchen door into the cold.

The porch light stayed on behind her.

It was a quarter mile down the lane to the mill.

Nobody ate.

Nobody cleared the plates.

Twenty minutes passed.

The door opened.

Peg came back with frost in her hair.

She carried a brown envelope and a black ledger.

She set them on the table by the turkey.

Ray opened the envelope.

The paper inside was old and legal.

He smoothed it flat with both hands.

Grandpa Lloyd's signature at the bottom.

A lawyer's seal in the corner.

One line typed in the middle.

Ray read it.

Then he read it again.

"The mill, the orchard, and the north field," he said, "to my granddaughter, Josie."

The room went dead.

Josie stared at her own name.

Printed on paper by a man who was already gone.

"Why would he do that?" she said.

"That can't be right," Cody said.

"I'm older."

Peg looked at Diane, not at Cody.

"He wrote it the fall after she was born," she said.

"He wanted her to have something of her own."

"He knew what she was to you."

"And you buried it the week he died."

Diane sat down slow, like her legs had quit.

"That's a fake," she said.

"Dad drew a newer one the year before he died."

"Ask the lawyer."

Peg didn't move.

"Then why'd you take the first one out of the safe yourself?" she said.

"I watched you do it."

Diane's rings went still.

Peg set the black ledger down on top of the will.

It landed with a flat, solid sound.

"Eight years of pages in here," she said.

"Every check you signed yourself."

"Now sit down, Diane."

"We'll count what you took."