Chapter 17 of 20Still Out, All Fall

Tidewater Estate Clearance would have a truck at the shop door Monday at seven, and Junie knew it before Nell got one arm out of her coat.

"Seven in the morning," Junie said. "Arnie Dole heard it at the co-op. Arnie hears everything that isn't his wife."

If the shelves rode out of Merrow Harbor Monday, the proof rode with them — the reprints standing in other people's dust jackets, boxed and hauled up the coast by noon, seventeen years reduced to what Nell had photographed and what she could say out loud.

She hung her coat on the third hook and took the fourth stool. "Chowder. I'll take a quart home."

"Two," Paulie said from the grill, not turning around. "You've got that look."

"Eleanor Whitcomb," Junie said, sitting down across from her and sliding the coffee over. "Eat something. Half the Landing has decided it was Theo Rackliff, and the other half has decided it was Theo Rackliff and feels bad about it."

"They can decide."

"He lied about being there, Nell."

"He did." Nell wrapped both hands around the mug; a northwest wind had come down the harbor at dawn and the shop's radiators had not caught up to it yet. "Paper doesn't flatter a person."

"Neither does a man, most days."

Paulie came around the end of the counter with the quart and then a second one, and said the price flat: twelve ninety-five, same as Cass's time, because the haddock had not gotten any prouder. "One's yours. One's for whoever's up with you at three in the morning."

"Nobody's up with me at three in the morning."

"Then it's for two nights." She wiped a counter that was already clean. "Tidewater took the Beal place in the spring. Carried off the cookstove and left the wood in it. I wouldn't let them past the door without a list."

Nell paid, carried the chowder back down the Landing, and phoned the county from the shop step.

"Tidewater comes Monday at seven," she said.

"I know what Monday is, Mrs. Whitcomb."

"Then hold the truck."

Behind him she could hear his radio going, a marine forecast he wasn't listening to. "I can hold a haul if there's a question hanging on the death. There isn't one. The town's got its answer, and the answer's named Theo."

"Convenient is a word I have watched walk out of probate court for thirty years."

"Then bring me the paper that stops it." The radio squawked. "Paper, Mrs. Whitcomb. Not a feeling."

She had paper, or photographs of paper, which a sheriff would tell her is not the same thing. She said nothing else into the phone.

That night her knees had her up at three, which was no longer news to either of them. She propped the hot-water bottle against her shins, made tea she did not drink, and brought the cardboard up from behind the coat closet — the board she had started in September under the only rule thirty years in probate ever taught her, the rule on the first card: when a face and a ledger disagree, believe the ledger.

Down the left side went the paper. The photograph of the supply ledger page in Ro's copperplate hand — cellar bulb, replaced, Monday. The photograph of the Wexford drop receipt, 11:52 at night, initialed and filed in that same hand, in the binder Ro kept for everything. Win's notebook with the page cut out of it, the lot numbers running in their long unbroken line and then a jump where the cellar shelves should have begun. The close-work glasses he would have folded away before a stair. The dark socket at the turn.

Down the right side went everything that argued the other way. Eighteen years of Cass's books kept in that same copperplate. Every whoopie pie that ever came up the stairs in wax paper. The old ledgers she had carried down to the office the week the appraisal started, and would not take thanks for. And the first one to say it, in front of half the town at the Grange — poor Win, I told that man a hundred times about those cellar stairs.

Under the coffee cup sat the clipping Iz had slipped her, soft along the folds. Nell took it up again. A short column about a burned dry-goods store in a mill town ninety miles inland, a payroll box gone, the partners ruined and gone from the county. It never named Cass. It never said a Thistle took a dollar. "She stole and ran" was said once at her father's kitchen table with the coffee going around, and then everybody said it, and after enough years it sounded like something written down.

At four she turned off the light and lay there with both lists running. What she wanted was a fact that belonged to nobody but the person who had stood in the dark at the Wexford drop, and she had a fair idea where to go and get it.

Sunday morning she drove out to the Cape. Ro met her at the screen door with a dish towel over one shoulder.

"Come in. You're just the one to tell me if this needs more nutmeg."

The kitchen window faced south, geraniums in it, turned and deadheaded and still flowering because Ro would not let a plant fail on her watch.

"From Hannaford," Nell said, setting the coffee cake on the counter. "The one with the crumb."

"I know the one with the crumb." Ro cut her a wedge of mince pie and put a fork beside it. "The parish wants pies for the Frolic and the apples this year are nothing, so we're testing."

"Testing on me."

"You're the only one who tells me the truth." Ro squared the coffee cake with the edge of the counter, where it already was.

"I came out because Monday's at seven," Nell said.

"I heard it from Raylene Thursday." Ro's hand stayed where it was. "Eighteen years. You'll let me carry the last of it out, won't you. I'd like to be the one."

"All right."

"I've been half through the shipping binder," Nell said. "I called the hub Tuesday about a parcel from September. Girl on the desk told me they finally got the light fixed over the outdoor drop."

Ro's hand kept moving. "The drop light."

"Over the slot. I said it was about time."

"It isn't fixed." She moved the coffee cake an inch. "It's been out all fall."

The refrigerator hummed. The kitchen went on being a kitchen. Ro filled one cup and then the other, hers first, and asked how the office was coming along, and Nell said the office was coming along.

"Do you ever take anybody with you? Up to Wexford, Fridays."

"Fridays I go alone." Ro set the pot back on the stove. "It's the only hour I get."

Nell finished the pie and told her it wanted more nutmeg, which was a lie in the pie's favor. Then she thanked her and said she would see her Monday.

She came back along the wharf road with the heater going and pulled onto the shoulder where the streetlight quits, past the co-op and short of the boatyard fence. The engine ticked. Out of the glove box she took the pad she had used for the September inventory and tore off one clean card.

She wrote one name at the top of it in her square print.

ROWENA PELLETIER

What she had was a light that had been out all fall, and one person besides the dark who knew it. She slid the card up under the visor, over the insurance slip and the registration. Monday the truck was due at seven, and by then she would have to say that name out loud, and she could not begin to price what came after.