Chapter 14: SOLD

Kenzie wanted her things from her mother's house, and she wanted to go that afternoon.

"If I wait, she'll have time to be nice about it," she said.

So the three of us drove north, and the bank's loan officer followed in his gray sedan.

He had agreed to walk the boatyard at eight the next morning, as the loan allowed.

"It's the earliest I can do," he'd told me in the parking garage. "A collateral inspection needs a written notice."

"So he has tonight," I'd said.

"Yes. But Mr. Pierce doesn't know about the notice yet."

I hoped he was right.

The Pierces lived in a gray shingled house on a rise above the water, with the yard spread out below it.

Kenzie rang her own bell.

Rosalie opened the door in a gray cardigan with her hair tied back, and for one second her face had nothing on it at all.

Then the warmth came back into it.

"Sweetheart," she said. "You came home."

"I came for my things."

"Of course you did. Come in. Libby, you too, I'm so glad."

She didn't look at me.

The front hall was full of boxes.

They were stacked three high along the wall, and every one had been labeled in black marker.

PORTLAND, KITCHEN.

PORTLAND, BOOKS.

PORTLAND, ROSALIE, DO NOT LET CARL PACK.

"You're moving," Kenzie said.

"We're downsizing. It's a business decision."

"You said Dad would have nothing."

"We've been through that." Rosalie smiled at the boxes. "Your room is upstairs. Take whatever you want."

Kenzie went up the stairs without another word.

Libby followed her.

That left Rosalie and me in the hall, with nine feet of cardboard between us.

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