My Father Brought a Locksmith to Sell the Ranch I Bought
The kitchen was cold when I let myself in through the back door. I did not turn on the stove or the overhead lights, choosing instead to sit at the wooden table while the twilight began to fill the corners of the room.
I took off my mother’s silver watch and laid it flat on the clean pine table. The crystal was scratched near the twelve, a tiny white line that had been there since I was twelve years old.
I found a clean linen dish towel in the drawer, poured a drop of mineral oil onto the corner, and began to polish the silver links of the band, working the cloth into the small grooves where the dirt had settled over the years.
Through the window, the empty meadow stretched out toward the dark line of the pine trees on the ridge. There were no tracks in the snow, no white sedans idling by the mailbox, and no sound but the quiet ticking of the grandfather clock in the hall.
The phone on the counter did not ring.
