The reception area of Caroline Briggs’s office in the brick strip mall smelled of lemon polish and old paper. The chair they gave me was covered in green leather, and the soft cushion sank down so low that my lower back began to throb. “Mr. Hayes, thank you for coming,” Caroline said, opening the door to the inner office. She was a tall woman with her dark hair pulled back in a neat clip. She carried a thick manila folder and set it on the desk, immediately aligning three black pens in a perfect row beside her notepad. “We have some legal steps to cover,” she said, sitting down. “This is the official death certificate.” She slid the paper across the desk. I looked at Eleanor’s name printed in cold black ink, and then at the date of her birth, which was only two years before mine. “The property is currently clear of any active mortgages,” Caroline said, watching my face. “But Eleanor was running the bait shop alone for a long time, and her health was failing.”

The black plastic telephone on my kitchen wall rang three times before I reached for the receiver. The linoleum under my bare feet felt like ice, and the air in the corner by the stove carried the sharp, burnt odor of gas from the old burner.

“Walter, this is Caroline Briggs,” the voice said.

I held my mug in my left hand, taking a sip of the lukewarm, metal-tasting coffee from the chipped pot. My sister Eleanor had been in the hospital in Lake Marlin for six days, but we had not spoken in a long time.

“She passed away at four this morning,” Caroline said.

The kitchen clock made a loud, plastic click as the minute hand dropped. I did not drop the mug, but my fingers went stiff against the ceramic.

“I am very sorry, Walter, but Eleanor wanted you to have this house.”

“The lakehouse,” I said, my voice sounding thick.

“The entire property,” Caroline said. “Birchwood. The house, the eleven acres, and the bait shop. It is all yours.”

I looked at the oil stain on the wallpaper behind the stove. My monthly pension check was three hundred and eight dollars, and my rent was due in less than two hours.

“There are some papers we need to sign,” Caroline said. “Can you come to my office in Cedar Falls this afternoon?”

“I will be there,” I said.

I hung up the receiver and stood by the sink for a long minute. The radiator under the window gave a sharp, metallic hiss and then went cold again.

Mr. Miller, my landlord, was waiting by the radiator at the end of the second-floor hallway when I stepped out at eight o’clock. He was holding his yellow receipt book and tapping a blue ballpoint pen against his knuckles.

“The pipes are knocking again,” Mr. Miller said, not looking up. “The oil bill went up sixty percent this month, Walter.”

I handed him the white envelope with my rent check inside. It was for four hundred and fifty dollars, which left exactly twenty-three dollars in my checking account.

“This is the last one,” I said.