Chapter 4: The Big House Gate

The ranch house gate is a limestone arch with an iron chain across it, and there was a brand new padlock on the chain.

I had grown up opening that gate with one hand.

Cade parked the truck and trailer in the road and looked at the lock.

"I've got bolt cutters in the box," he said.

"It's my gate," I said.

"That's what I said."

"Cut it."

He took the cutters out of the truck bed.

The padlock was shiny and expensive.

The jaws closed on the shackle with a crunch so small I almost missed it.

The chain slid off the posts and hit the dirt.

On the porch of the big house, my aunt Hilde set down her coffee cup.

She came to the top of the steps in her gray church dress, with her silver braid pinned up and her hands folded.

She waited for us to walk up the drive.

She looked ten years younger than she had at the party.

She looked rested.

"Mathilde," she said. "Come in, child. You've had a night."

"I'm here for my mare and my father's hat," I said.

"Don't be dramatic."

"I'm not being anything. It's my house."

"It is," Hilde agreed, kindly. "And I have kept it for you since the day your mother died."

"I did what any mother would do for a girl who couldn't do for herself."

Behind her, through the screen, I could see the hall and the hook where my father hung his hat.

"Britta is lying down upstairs," Hilde said. "In your old room."

"She isn't well, and she cried until three. Do you want to see what you did?"

"I want my hat," I said.

"You are sleeping in the hired man's son's bed, with your father not six months in the ground."