The blue cabinet in the corner of the nursery office had been locked since my husband passed, but this morning the door stood a half-inch open.
Inside, sitting on the bottom shelf where the old tax ledgers belonged, were five hand-carved cedar silhouettes of herons.
I picked up the first bird, running my thumb over the rough wood.
Beatrice clicked her tongue over a stack of tax receipts at the desk.
My fingers were stiff and swollen from the autumn damp, making it hard to grip the small figure.
“Gerald must have been in here last night,” Beatrice said, her voice dropping to a quiet, apologetic murmur.
She reached up to adjust her single strand of pearls.
“He was looking for the old land lease authorization from the county.”
I looked down at the paper in my lap, where I was cataloging the winter ferns.
“Why would he need that?” I asked. “His father and I put that lease away years ago.”
“I don’t know,” Beatrice said, not looking at me.
“But there is a key. A brass one with a red tag.”
She set a folder down with a soft thud.
“He was looking for that, too. I think it is hidden somewhere in the main house.”
She didn’t say why Gerald wanted the key, and she wouldn’t look me in the eye when I asked.
By three in the afternoon, the sky had turned the color of wet slate.
Gerald backed his flatbed truck up to the loading dock, the metal gate clanging as he let it down.
He began tossing stacks of black plastic pots onto the concrete, his movements quick and jerky.
He stopped to spin the gold wedding band on his left ring finger, a habit that always meant his mind was three miles down the road.
“We need to move on that corporate restructuring I mentioned last week, Martha,” Gerald said, speaking so fast his words ran together.
“Modernize the asset structure.”
He threw another stack down.
“We are sitting on prime equity here while the market moves past us.”
I took off my reading glasses and polished them slowly with the hem of my linen apron, watching him.
