Court Papers in the Locked Drawer of a Community Doctor

“The density is correct,” Lucia said, turning the wig in her hands. “I added twenty grams of matching silver hair to the crown to give it more height. If anyone looks closely, they will only see a very expensive cut.” “I cannot have anyone looking too closely,” I said. “They won’t,” Lucia said. “They will…

Arthur did not answer immediately. He looked out the window at the gravel lot where a delivery truck was backing up, its warning signal making a steady beep. “If we file this, there is no going back to a quiet compromise with the board,” he said. “The compromise was buried under the new library wing,”…

“Do you think she sold it?” Martha asked. “No,” I said. “She has it hidden in her closet. She thinks it is hers now.” I set the pen down and took a slow sip of the tea, the warmth spreading through my chest. The mahogany table was polished to a high shine, reflecting the gray…

Frank stopped wiping his glasses. He set them on the table and looked at me, his eyes very clear behind the lenses. “That is not where that car went, Mia.” “Where did it go, Frank?” “It went north,” Frank said. “Thirty miles north to a shop in Clarion. A boy named Bobby ran it. He…

The legal fees would take almost everything I had left. If the judge did not dissolve the injunction on the fifteenth, I would be broke and landless, standing in the cold with nothing but a truck and a box of old military records. My father had spent thirty years building his name in this valley,…

By nine the next morning, the sun was high enough to melt the frost on the hood of my truck, though the air still carried the sharp, dry chill of early spring. The ranger station sat on the far edge of town, a low building made of square-cut lodgepole pines that smelled of damp earth,…