Chapter 4: The Desk

On Friday I drove to town alone, the way I did every other week.

Iris stood on the porch with her arms folded against the cold and watched the truck go down the drive.

She never asked to come anymore.

I had trained that out of her so gently that neither of us could say when it stopped.

The post office in Pryor Bend is one room with brass boxes on the wall and a clerk who knows my name.

Box 114 held a feed bill, a seed catalog, the vet's invoice and one long cream envelope.

The return address was a law office in Billings.

It was the fifth one.

I knew what was inside without opening it.

The clerk looked at the envelope and then at me.

"Another one from the lawyers," she said. "Must be important."

"Estate business."

"Martha's, still? After three years?"

"Paperwork never ends."

I paid for the stamps I didn't need and walked out with the letter folded in half in my back pocket.

I did not read it in the truck.

I drove home with both hands tight on the wheel.

I did not think about the date stamped in the corner.

At the house, Iris was waiting at the kitchen window.

She had a pie cooling on the sill and flour on her forearms.

She took the grocery bags from me and put the seed catalog on the table, and her whole face lit up.

"Tomatoes," she said. "Can we do the raised beds this year?"

"We'll see."

"You always say that."

"I always mean it."

She kissed my cheek, quick and light, and went back to the pie.

I took the cream envelope to the office and shut the door.

The safe was bolted into the wall behind a shelf of ledgers.

I unlocked it with the key from my neck and laid the envelope on top of the others.

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