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The house smells of dust and lavender and cold. I put on every light I can find. The front lock sticks and I jiggle it twice. I put my hand on the back door where the frame has been splintered. The wood is rough under my palm.
In the pantry I find, behind a row of mason jars, a box of old bulbs. I carry one out to the porch and stand on a kitchen chair to screw it into the lantern socket. When I flip the switch inside, the light comes on, yellow and warm, spilling over the swept boards and down the steps into the orchard.
I stand in the kitchen doorway with the draft on my neck and look at it.
Nell's photograph is in my duffel. I take it out and set it on the kitchen table, upright, the way he left it. She squints up at me from her ladder like she's waiting to hear what I've done.
"Don't," I tell her.
Her expression doesn't change.
The envelope is in my bag. I take it out, and unfold the letter, and find the number at the bottom in small neat type. Brent Calder, Regional Acquisitions. It's a Sunday night, nearly eight o'clock. I dial it on Nell's old wall phone, the beige one with the long curly cord, and stand with the receiver against my ear listening to it ring. It goes to voicemail on the fourth.
"You've reached Brent Calder with Ridgeline Land Partners. Please leave a message."
The tone sounds.
"This is Carolina Whitaker. You sent me an offer for my grandmother's orchard. The answer is no. It was no before you sent someone to paint my barn, and it's no now, and it will be no every day for the rest of my life. The Sheriff has your number, and so does the state. If you contact me again, I'll tell them where to find you." I take a breath. "Have a good evening."
I hang up. My hand is trembling and I flex it. It keeps trembling. I find that I'm smiling a little, wildly, at the beige phone.
Beside it on the wall is a pad with a pencil on a string, and next to the pad hangs a battered address book held to a nail with a loop of yarn. The front cover is stained with coffee. I take it down and open it. Nell's handwriting runs up and down the pages in faded blue ink, names and numbers and notes in the margins. Doyle, Margaret, it says, in the D's, pie, bake committee, cheats.
I laugh. My laugh breaks in the middle.
She answers on the second ring.
"Margaret Doyle."
"Margaret, it's Carolina. Whitaker. I'm sorry to call so late..."
"It's not late. It's Sunday. I'm eating leftover pie." There's the clink of a fork on a plate. "I was hoping you'd call, honestly. I was going to go up to that house and sit on the porch until you did."
"You said you had something to ask me."
"I do." Her voice sharpens, and gets kinder at the same time. "I've been the only physical therapist at the Bloomfield Family Clinic for twenty-six years. I retire on the thirtieth of December. I posted the position in March, and I've had two applicants. Neither called back" A pause. "You'd have the whole floor. Four treatment rooms, a gym, a good aide named Denise who knows where everything is. Half the county has been driving to the city for rehab, and some of them can't. I've had a man in his eighties drive forty minutes each way with a broken hip because I'm one woman with a full schedule and there's nobody else to take the overflow."
I lower myself into one of Nell's kitchen chairs. "Margaret, I live four hours away. I've got a lease. I have patients."
"I know."
"And I haven't decided anything about the orchard."
"I know that too." She says it so gently that my throat tightens. "I'm not asking for an answer. I'm asking you to come by tomorrow at nine and look at the space. I'll make coffee. You can bring your skepticism, and I'll bring the paperwork."
"It isn't about a man." It comes out in a rush. Sounds ridiculous. "I want to be clear. Whatever I decide, it isn't going to be because of a man."
"Nobody said a word about a man."
"You were at the festival."
"I'm seventy years old. I see everything, and I don't say anything. It's the secret of a happy life." I can hear her smiling. "Nine o'clock. Bring a pen."
"Margaret."
"Yes, dear?"
"Thank you."
