the document on his blotter and turned it so Mrs. Ketchem could see. “Unfortunately, you aren’t able to sell or deed the farm. As you can see, it’s been left equally to you or your heirs and to your brother-in-law or his heirs.”
“I know that.” Her voice left no doubt that she thought him a fool. “David’s got no interest in running a farm. I’ll buy out his half.”
Norman blinked. “You’ll… buy out his half?”
“How long do you think it will take?”
“Gosh.” Norman stalled. He knew the faded neighborhood where Jane Ketchem lived in her modest house; knew her thirteen-year-old car, most likely held together by spit and wire; had seen her at Greuling’s Grocery, carefully counting out coins from a snap purse to pay her grocery bill. “Well, we’d have to get a commercial Realtor out there, and an auctioneer to value the livestock, and another for the personalty-that’s the effects inside the house…” How could he phrase this so as not to wound her pride? “I’m no expert, but I think the farm might easily be worth twenty thousand dollars. Maybe more.”
He waited warily for her face to sag in disappointment or tighten in frustrated anger, but it did neither. Instead, she said in her usual snap-to-it tone, “Very well then. Can I trust you to hire the Realtor and auctioneers? I don’t want to be robbed blind by a bunch of unnecessary fees.”
“Mrs. Ketchem, that means buying out your brother-in-law’s half interest would cost ten thousand dollars. Or more.”
“I can divide twenty by two, Norman Madsen.”
“But-how can you afford that?”
She leaned back into the leather chair, so that her eyes seemed sunk in shadows. “I told you I have a nest egg. I’ve invested well over the years.”
He made one last effort to save her from her own folly. “Even so, if you deplete it to buy out David Ketchem’s share in the farm and then turn around and give it away to the town, you’ll be left with no other income stream but your Social Security. I have to point out that as a single woman-”
“Widow,” she said. Her dark eyes beetled into his. He actually felt a narrow thread of sweat erupt on his upper lip. His father had stressed how important that title was to her. The fattest folder in the redwell contained the records of Madsen and Madsen’s efforts to have the maybe not-so-late but certainly run-off Jonathon Ketchem declared legally dead.
“Of course,” he said. “Without your, ah, late husband’s support, you need to take even more care than usual for your old age.”
She blinked her eyes slowly, as if acknowledging his rolling over and showing belly. “I don’t need much. If I buy out David’s half of the farm, there will still be enough to keep me until I’m a hundred. If it’s the good Lord’s judgment that I live so long.” Her voice didn’t sound as if great old age would be a blessing.
“What about the current beneficiaries of your will? Your daughter, any grandchildren you might have, your church. You risk leaving them with a substantially reduced bequest. Your estate’s only assets will be your residence and your investments. There’s no telling how precipitately they could decline in value over the coming years.”
She rolled her eyes, and he had the feeling he’d been using too many words again. “My daughter is well married to a man who can provide for her and any children she might have. And Lord knows there are people aplenty tossing money at St. Alban’s. Maybe I’ll leave all my money to the clinic.” She paused, frowned, and set the edges of her hands against her narrow lips. “No, I take that back. Whatever’s left over when I die I’ll put into trust. Let my daughter decide what to do with it. If she needs it, she can have it, and if she don’t, she can give it away.”
“But is this what the Ketchems would have wanted for you? An old age of counting every penny? Surely they left you the Millers Kill house and the Cossayuharie farm as a means to ensure your comfort and happiness?”
“My late husband’s parents have always been good to me. But they, more than anyone else, would understand. About this clinic. About how I want Jonathon’s name to be remembered.” She wrapped her long fingers over the turned posts of her chair’s armrests and shifted her gaze away from him, to the surface of his desk. “Does that file box of yours have anything about what happened to me and my family?”
“Yes.” He swallowed. “Yes, it does.”
“Let me tell you something about comfort and happiness, young man.” She looked at him head-on, trapping him with her gaze. “My husband and I both came from good families, successful families, and when we wed, we were hard-set on making a success of our own farm. We got fifty acres near the Sacandaga Vlaie that was cheap because it flooded every few years, and we worked. We sweated, we scrimped, we lived for the day after the day when we’d have everything we wanted for our comfort, everything we needed for our happiness.” Her face, with skin in sharp- edged folds over her bones, showed every one of her fifty-four years. But her eyes snapped with the fierce will of someone much younger. “And I never knew, that whole time we were so full of wanting, that the only happiness I would ever know in life was going on right there, on that farm with the soggy bottom acres, washing bucketloads of diapers and trying to stretch one chicken to feed a whole family for a half a week.” She lifted the paper off his green felt blotter without looking at it and handed it to him. “Take my offer to the aldermen. Get me my clinic, Mr. Madsen.”
Chapter 4
Thursday, March 9
There was a protestor blocking the sidewalk in front of the free clinic. Clare drove slowly past the three-storied Queen Anne, a grand old lady of a house awkwardly modernized by a lumber wheelchair ramp and a rickety-looking fire escape. A large sign with MILLERS KILL FREE CLINIC and the hours had been bolted next to the entryway, fine mahogany double doors whose original windows, probably etched glass, had been replaced with scratched Plexiglas.
Blocking the sidewalk was probably an exaggeration, since the lone woman, placard over her shoulder, was striding back and forth between the edge of the walk and the foot of the clinic’s stairs. Clare pulled into the parking spot she had seen on her first pass down Barkley Avenue and turned off the car’s engine. She was going to have to run the gauntlet, no way around it. This was the only parking space anywhere near the historical society she could confidently get in and out of. Evidently recently vacated by a much bigger vehicle, it was practically dry. Her pretty little rebuilt Shelby Cobra, a dream car when she bought it last spring, was lousy in snow and slush. She had chosen it with her vanity, not her good sense, and she had been paying for it-literally, when its transmission gave out-all winter long. Pride’s painful, her grandmother Fergusson used to say, whenever she was twisting Clare’s straight hair into curlers.
The storm had blown through last night, leaving a clear, bright morning behind. The wind, when she stepped out of the car, caught her with the shock of diving into cold water. She zipped her parka up to her chin-strategically covering her clerical collar-and pulled her knit cap low over her forehead. Maybe if she was nothing more than an anonymous figure in winter woolies she could escape without a harangue.
She clambered over a rock-hard lump of brown-and-gray snow that covered the curb and crunched up the salt- crusted sidewalk toward the historical society. She kept her head down and her hands jammed in her pockets to avoid having any pamphlets thrust on her.
Don’t notice me, don’t notice me, she chanted in her head, but as she was the only other person within two blocks of the clinic, it wasn’t surprising that her incantation didn’t work.
“Ma’am? Excuse me, ma’am?”
Clare lifted her eyes from the gritty walk. She couldn’t help it. A lifetime of conditioned politeness kicked in, and she pasted a pleasant expression on her face.
