Chapter 4
Teo was let go on a Friday in July, at four o'clock, with two weeks' pay and a handshake from the office manager because Ward was in the city.
He came up the north lane that night with a plastic crate of his things and a printed inventory sheet folded in his back pocket.
"The maintenance binder," he said. "I made a copy before I handed it in. I don't know what I'm looking for. I just didn't want them to have the only one."
Delia spread it on the table under the kitchen light and read it the way she read a condition report - left to right, twice.
Line item, March of last year. 1 spool, 14-gauge galvanized wire, 250 ft - east parcel fence. Harnett & Sons. Signed off, W. Ashcombe.
She went out to the maintenance barn at seven the next morning with the estate's permission still technically in force and her visitor's badge clipped to her blazer.
The spool was on the third shelf, part used, its paper tag still wired to the core. She took the tag off with the small brass screwdriver she called the second opinion, and she held it next to the photograph of the picture wire she had taken in October, and she stood there in the barn for a long time with the smell of cut grass and diesel around her.
Same gauge. Same finish. Same maker. Bright zinc, machine-drawn, and no possible reason to exist on a frame hung in 1928.
She went to the office and asked the office manager for the payables binder, and the office manager, who was twenty-six and had not been told anything, gave it to her.
The invoice was there. The contractor's name. The line item. Ward's signature at the bottom, in the gold pen.
She photographed it. She photographed the spool. She photographed the tag.
On Tuesday her library access was revoked.
On Wednesday a letter arrived from the estate's lawyer, two pages, the words "all estate property in your possession, including deaccessioned hardware" repeated four times.
On Thursday the Delaware Valley Conservators' Circle opened a complaint against her membership, on the basis of a public report.
On Friday Ward announced it to the historical society's board: the east parcel would go to auction on September eighteenth, at Ashwood, preview in the library, and he was pleased to confirm that the parcel's deeds were in the muniment room and would be available for inspection by any qualified buyer.
Delia read that last sentence three times at her kitchen table with the eleven photographs in front of her.
An auction cannot close without deeds. The deeds were behind a steel door with one lock. To sell the parcel he had to open that room, on the record, in front of witnesses, with the whole family in the house.
He had just handed her the room.