Chapter 6: What She Signed

Dorothy Harlow lived on the second floor of a brick building above a hardware store in the center of Rhinebeck.

Zachary drove Melinda there at eight in the morning.

She wore his flannel shirt and a pair of his old jeans cinched with a belt.

His wool socks were still on her feet, inside canvas shoes from the truck.

She hadn't slept.

Posy's voice through the car window kept coming back.

Melinda had asked Zachary about it on the drive.

He had said only that Posy was eight and had heard too much.

The answer wasn't his to give.

She stood outside the door for a full minute before she knocked.

Her mother opened it with her reading glasses pushed up into her grey hair.

She looked at Melinda's face, and then at the boy behind her.

"Zachary," Dorothy said.

"Mrs. Harlow."

"I suppose you'd better come in."

The apartment was small and tidy, with her father's armchair wedged into the corner of the living room. A cardigan hung on the back of it.

Melinda's chest hurt. She stood still and looked at that chair.

"I didn't know you kept it," she said.

"It's the only thing I took when I left," Dorothy said. "Sit down."

Nobody sat.

"Mom, I wasn't lying on the phone. I really don't remember. The last thing I remember is the maple, and Leland, and being nineteen."

"So you said." Dorothy folded her arms. "You'll forgive me if I don't know what to do with that."

"What did I do? Tell me. I'll listen."

Dorothy studied her for a while.

Then she crossed the room to a desk, opened a drawer and took out a manila envelope.

"I paid forty dollars to the county clerk for this," she said. "I thought I'd want it for the day you said you'd never seen it."

She laid a copy of the deed on the table.

Melinda sat. She read it slowly, line by line, with her finger under the words.

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