We closed on April twenty-second at the title company in Kearney.
Tom Riley shook my hand afterward. He said he’d been to a lot of land sales in his life, and he’d never once had a client stop at a half before.
That afternoon, the four of us drove out to the homeplace with the keys. Walt followed in his pickup.
I’d asked him to come. He said he would. Then he called back an hour later to ask if I was sure.
I was sure.
Mr. Ostrander had left the house clean and empty.
He’d painted the inside the year he bought it. The whole downstairs, in one flat white. He’d done a careful job of it, too.
He just hadn’t known what he was painting over.
In the kitchen, the frame of the door that leads out to the back porch was smooth and white from top to bottom.
Every April, from the time he could stand up, June had backed Luke up against that door frame on his birthday. She’d lay a book flat on top of his head and make a pencil mark. With the date written beside it in her small, slanted handwriting.
Every single year. Until he graduated high school.
The week of June’s funeral, while everybody else was in the living room with casseroles, I’d gone into the kitchen by myself with my phone.
And I’d photographed every single one of those marks. Close up. With a ruler held beside each one.
I didn’t know why at the time. I just didn’t want them to be lost.
I’d never told anybody.
I took out my phone. I pulled up the pictures. And I handed it to Walt.
He looked at the screen for a long time.
Then he took his reading glasses out of his shirt pocket.
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