Chapter 4: Gran's Name on a Helicopter

The only thing left standing of Gran's place was the gatehouse.

It sat at the bottom of her burned driveway, one room with a woodstove, and the fire had stopped at its porch rail.

Jude drove me there from the church with the headlights on the black hillside.

Where the house used to be there was a square of chimney and nothing else.

"I can't go in there," I said, looking at the chimney.

"You don't have to. The gatehouse is eighty feet from it."

He carried in a sleeping bag from his truck, and a camp lantern, and a bag of groceries I had not seen him buy.

He lit the woodstove with two matches and did not make conversation.

I watched his hands while he worked.

They were big and careful, with a pale burn scar along the left thumb.

When the stove caught, he stood up and looked around at the single bed and the narrow table.

"It isn't much."

"It's hers," I said. "She used to sit out here with the foreman on Sundays and do the books."

I took the blue folder out of my bag and set it on the table.

It had a strip of tape across the flap, and on the tape, in Gran's slanting handwriting, it said: For D. After the lawyer reads.

I had not noticed that on the road.

"She wouldn't let me open it," I said. "Even in the car, she said not to let it burn, and she never said why."

Jude looked at it, and then at me.

"Then don't open it," he said. "Not tonight."

He left the lantern, and a card with his number on it, and he went back out to his truck.

He sat in the truck for a long time with the dome light off.

I know because I watched from the window until I fell asleep with my coat on.

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