Chapter 10
The keypad chirped three times. The alarm fell silent, and the back door opened.
A man in a gray work jacket stepped into the kitchen, glanced at the papers on the table, then at me. Behind him, another worker carried a plastic tub marked with Walter’s shaky handwriting: WINTER GLOVES.
“Don’t touch those,” Ruth said.
The first man barely looked at her. “We’ve got a schedule.”
I gathered the deed and trust from beneath Ruth’s hand. She gave them up without a word, her gaze fixed on the doorway. I slid the recorder between the documents, folded Walter’s quilt around the bundle, and tucked it into the quilt’s thick center fold.
The fabric hid the papers, but I could feel every sharp edge through the worn patches.
The workers had already started. One carried Walter’s lamp toward the back steps. Another lifted the wooden cabinet Emily had fought to keep inside, tilting it so hard its doors banged open.
“Put it down,” I said.
He looked past me to Calder Voss, who had just come through the front door.
Calder wore a neat dark coat that looked absurd among the open boxes and scuffed floors. Mom followed him in, with Dad trailing a few paces behind her. She took in the workers, the quilt in my arms, and the empty place on the table where the documents had been.
“There,” she said. “She’s taken them.”
“They were Walter’s,” I said.
Mom’s face tightened. “You’ve been filling your head with Ruth’s stories. Those papers belong to the family.”
Calder held out one hand, as though he expected me to hand him the quilt.
“The agreement gives me possession,” he said. “We’re clearing the property.”
“Walter refused to sign it.”
“Your father witnessed it.”
Dad’s eyes dropped to the floor. For a moment, I heard only the scrape of the cabinet against the boards.
Mom stepped closer. “You can still stop making this ugly, Emily.”
“You brought a crew into his house.”
“I brought people to do what needed doing.”
Behind her, Brianna stood near the kitchen doorway, her phone clutched in both hands. Her gaze flicked to the keypad, then to the strangers moving through the rooms. She didn’t say anything. I didn’t ask her to explain the code again. Its consequences were walking around us in work boots.
A crash sounded from the garden.
I turned toward the back window. A worker had disappeared into the shed. Another was dragging Walter’s metal toolbox across the grass.
“Stop!” I shouted, and ran for the door.
“Emily, don’t,” Ruth called.
The shed smelled of old wood and damp soil. The man inside had a red can at his feet. I saw him tip it over the workbench, wetting the boards and the stack of seed catalogs Walter had saved for their planting dates.
“What are you doing?”
He looked at me, then struck a lighter.
The flame caught at once, running along the soaked paper. He backed out past me, his face unreadable.
I lunged for the catalogs, then recoiled as heat slapped my cheeks. Orange light climbed the bench and crawled up the shed wall.
“Fire!” I screamed.
The man kept walking.
I ran for the house. By the time I reached the porch, smoke was pushing through the back doorway, thick and black at the ceiling. The workers stopped hauling things. Mom stared at the shed, one hand lifted to her throat.
“Everybody out!” Ruth shouted.
No one tried to argue. The cabinet tipped against the doorframe, its contents spilling across the floor. Smoke pushed farther into the hall, swallowing the framed photographs and the little table where Walter had kept his keys.
Brianna was still inside.
I found her crouched beside the dining table, coughing, one arm over her face. Her phone lay on the floor beside her. She reached for it, but I caught her wrist.
“Leave it.”
“I was copying—”
“Leave it. Come on.”
I pulled the quilt from around my shoulders and wrapped it over her. The hidden bundle pressed between us, stiff beneath the patches. Brianna grabbed the quilt’s edge as I hauled her toward the kitchen.
Ruth met us at the back door. “This way!”
We stumbled onto the porch as a gust drove smoke across the yard. The shed roof had begun to glow along one edge. Behind it, the house’s old eaves disappeared into a rolling gray cloud.
Across the street, a neighbor had a phone to her ear. Another stood beside her, shouting for everyone to move back. Sirens sounded somewhere beyond the rows of houses, distant but approaching.
Brianna folded over, coughing into the quilt. I held her upright, one arm around her shoulders, and felt the documents safe beneath the fabric.
The front door slammed open behind us.
May you like
I turned.
Calder came through the smoke with Walter’s framed photograph tucked against his chest. The glass caught the firelight as he crossed the porch toward his truck.
