I looked at the diploma on the wall near the hallway, half hidden behind a framed photograph of Eleanor and me at Glacier National Park. Forty years in real estate law. Forty years drafting purchase agreements, fighting title disputes, unwinding fraudulent transfers, litigating easements, boundary lines, mineral reservations, lake access rights, family trusts, probate disasters, and every other way human beings found to confuse love with property. I had spent decades making other lawyers nervous when they saw Walter Harmon listed as opposing counsel.
Then Eleanor got sick, and I retired early at sixty-two because I wanted to spend whatever time she had left sitting beside her instead of across from strangers in conference rooms. After she died, I let people forget what I had been.
That was my mistake.
I had let my son forget, too.
“I’ll call you back,” I said.
“Dad, don’t—”
I ended the call.
For a long time, I remained where I was, phone in hand, robe tied loosely at my waist, coffee cooling on the counter. The first hard truth of old age is not that the body weakens. It is that people begin to assume your life can be rearranged for their convenience. They do not always mean to be cruel. Sometimes they simply forget you are still the main character of your own days.
I walked to the living room and sat in my chair by the fireplace.
The chair had molded itself to me over the years. Eleanor used to complain that it was too ugly to be allowed in a room with windows, but whenever she thought I was asleep, she sat there with her tea. The leather was cracked at the arms. The left cushion dipped more than the right. I rested my hand on it and allowed myself one slow breath.
Then I reached for the phone again and called the one man I had not called in four years.
Frank answered on the second ring.
“Walt,” he said, and his voice warmed immediately. “Well, I’ll be damned. Are you calling to finally accept that fishing invitation, or are you about to ruin my morning?”
“Probably the second one.”
His tone changed just enough. Frank Mercer had been my law partner for twenty-seven years. He knew the difference between casual trouble and real trouble by the way a person inhaled before speaking. “What happened?”
“I need you to pull a deed. Northern Lake County. Parcel 11408A. Registered owner should be Kyle David Harmon.”
