Chapter 22: Redeemed in Full

Audra's POV

It snowed on the twenty-first of November, a fine dry snow that blew sideways across the courthouse steps.

I stood in the hall at ten minutes to nine with a cashier's check in my coat pocket and Jed at my shoulder.

The hallway was full.

I had expected a few people.

There were sixty, in work coats and church coats, with snow melting off their hats.

The woman from the feed store stood by the radiator with her gray braid down her back.

"Told you," she said.

"Thank you."

"Don't thank me. Thank your grandfather."

Ranchers I had never met nodded as I went by.

Two women in their fifties stood together, and one of them took my hand and pressed it, and said nothing at all.

At the far end of the hall, by the clerk's window, stood Dina.

She wore black wool and pearls, and the gray-suited lawyer stood at her side.

Next to him was a man with a leather briefcase, in a good coat too thin for the weather.

Dina saw me and gave a small, pleasant nod.

"Audra. I hoped you'd come."

"I wouldn't miss it."

"The sale is called at nine." She glanced at her watch. "I'm sorry, truly. I did try to make this gentle."

The clerk slid back the glass.

She was a short woman with square glasses, and she had been reading my lawyer's emails since October.

"Good morning," she said. "Anyone here on the Dunning parcel?"

"Yes," Dina said. "Teague Mesa LLC, as certificate holder."

"And I'm here as the occupant," I said.

I stepped to the window and put the cashier's check on the counter.

The hallway went so quiet I heard the radiator tick.

"Redemption in full, with interest to date, on all seven certificates," I said. "Two hundred fifteen thousand, one hundred twelve dollars."

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