Chapter 18: Porch Keys

Freya's POV

On Saturday at a quarter to noon, there were twenty people on the lawn of the house on Fairmont.

They had come out of the neighboring houses with their coffee, pretending they were checking their mailboxes.

Dot stood next to me in her church coat with her purse held in both hands.

Keir stood on my other side, half a step back, where I had asked him to stand.

The lawyer was the old man's son, a tall, tired man in a gray overcoat with a folder under his arm.

"It's a transfer in lieu of repayment," he told me quietly. "She signs, you sign, the clerk records it Monday. That's all it is."

"That's all it is," I said.

Stanton came up the walk behind us.

He wore a clean shirt, and he had shaved, and he had a key ring in his hand.

He held it out.

"The Corolla," he said. "It's out front. I signed the title over to you this morning. It's yours."

I looked at the Corolla at the curb.

It had one new dent and a parking ticket under the wiper.

"Thank you," I said.

I took the key, and it was the first thing he had ever given me that cost him nothing and meant something.

At noon exactly, the front door opened.

Bernadette stepped out onto the porch.

She had on her green silk dress from the party, and her pearls, and lipstick.

Behind her I could see straight down the hall.

It was empty.

The photographs were gone, and the console table, and the long runner rug.

Even the clock had been taken off the wall, and a pale square showed where it had hung.