My Father Brought a Locksmith to Sell the Ranch I Bought
I looked back at the gray house, then down at the snow on my boots. The unease in my chest was still there, but it was replaced by a cold certainty.
“Let us do it,” I said.
We drove back to the office in silence, the truck heater blowing dry, dusty air.
Carol set the three-page preliminary purchase agreement on her desk. She handed me a heavy black pen.
“Once you sign this, the bank holds the deposit,” Carol said.
I pressed the pen to the paper, my hand steady as I wrote my name on the bottom line.
The cardboard boxes from the hardware store in Craig were stacked six high on the kitchen linoleum. The room smelled of damp cedar and old floor wax, the kind of cold that stays in the corners of a room until noon.
I lifted a heavy iron skillet from the top box and set it on the iron grate of the stove, the metal making a sharp clang in the empty house.
