Chapter 3

At five I decided we were leaving.

Not the county-just to the clinic in town, where there were people who didn't work for Dru Alcott. I had eleven dollars in my coat and I had Mamie, and I had a card in a cane.

I got her coat on. She let me. She stood up on her own, which she hadn't done in a month.

We went out the front door. The truck was in the side yard, keys in the cup holder because Cole never took the keys in, not on a Thursday.

I had Mamie by the arm. Mud sucked at my boots. The fog was so low you couldn't see the quarry fence from the house.

We got within ten feet of the truck.

"Wren."

Cole came around the back bumper. He'd been in the shed the whole time, watching. His coat was wet. He had the smashed camera in one hand-what was left of it-and I understood then that he'd been down at the oak, digging the housing out of the slate, prying the case open with his knife, looking for a card that wasn't there.

He looked at Mamie. Then at me.

"Where are you going."

"Clinic."

"You're not taking my grandmother to the clinic."

"Cole, she-"

"You're not taking her anywhere." He put his hand out. "Give me your phone."

"I don't have it."

"Your phone's on the kitchen counter. I put it there this morning." He waited. "Wren."

I thought about running. I thought about the eleven dollars and the walk to Route 4 and the hip that had been aching for six weeks. I thought about Mamie's arm in mine.

I gave him the phone.

He put it in his coat. Then he took the truck keys out of the cup holder, and he looked at me for a long second, and he said, "Go inside."

I went inside.

Mamie was quiet all the way back. In the kitchen, Dru was at the table with the folder, and she watched us come in and didn't say anything, and I hated her more in that moment than I'd ever hated anyone, because she wasn't even pretending to be surprised.

I told them Mamie needed a nap and took her to her room. Then I said I needed deposit slips from the office, because the bank was picking them up Friday, and Cole shrugged, because the office was mine on paper and nobody in that family had ever wanted to do the books.

The office was still cold. The laptop was still awake.

I looked at the topo map tacked to the corkboard-the whole quarry, the parcel boundaries, the access easement, all my handwriting, because I was the one who kept it current.

There were initials on it that I hadn't written. W.A., in my handwriting, next to parcels 4 and 5. Parcels I'd never touched. Parcels that sat inside the developer's offer.

I stood with my hand on the desk. I didn't sit down.

Then I looked at the printer tray, which was empty except for one page nobody had picked up. A draft. Sale of real property. Initialed W.A. at the bottom, and a signature line with my name already filled in.

The back door of the house opened. Then the hall. Then drawers, closet doors, the sound of Cole moving through our bedroom like a man looking for something small and hard.

I turned off the laptop. I folded the page into my coat. I went out the side door into the fog.