Chapter 20: Foreclosure

The sale was scheduled for ten o'clock on the courthouse steps, and by a quarter to, there were nearly a hundred people on the lawn.

I had not expected the crowd.

They stood in the cold in their good coats, holding coffee.

It looked as if the whole county had come to a funeral that might turn into a party.

A man from the Courier held up a camera.

A state marshal in a gray overcoat stood at the top of the steps with a clipboard.

My father walked up the center of the walk in his best suit with a leather folder under his arm.

Teddy and I flanked him, and we did not hurry.

"Remember," my father said out of the side of his mouth. "Nobody speaks until I put it down."

"I'll be a statue."

"You have never been a statue in your life. Try."

The silver-templed man stood on the left side of the steps with two lawyers, and his smile was already thin.

On the other side, away from him by about thirty feet, stood a woman in a camel coat.

She was alone.

She had not looked at her husband once.

When we reached the bottom of the steps, she crossed the lawn, in front of everyone, and came to stand at my right shoulder.

"Good morning," she said.

"Good morning."

Her husband's smile died.

A murmur went through the crowd, and the man from the Courier began to take pictures very fast.

At two minutes to ten, a gray Delacourt town car pulled up at the curb.

Regina got out of the back seat.

She wore black wool, a hat and a veil.

For the first time in my life she did not have her pearls on.

The place at her throat was bare.

It looked like a missing tooth.

Preston got out after her, hunched into his coat, with a gray face.

He didn't take her arm.

She came up the walk with her head high and her handbag under her elbow.

The crowd drew back from her as it had once drawn back from me.

"Marshal," she said clearly, when she reached the steps. "I will be bidding in person."

"Ma'am, you'll need to register."

"I have registered. My attorney sent the paperwork Friday."

She turned and looked at me through the veil.

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