Saturday at 8:52, a key turned in the front door.
Not mine.
Mine was in my jeans.
I was at the sink with my coffee when Krista walked in like she paid the propane.
Behind her came a girl of maybe twenty-two with a camera bag and a ring light on a pole.
"Oh," Krista said.
"You're up."
"I live here."
"This is Kaylee."
"She shoots all of Brad's listings."
Kaylee gave me a small wave and looked at the floor.
Krista had a roll of black garbage bags under one arm.
She tore one off before I could say anything.
"We'll just declutter the front rooms."
"Buyers can't see past stuff, hon."
She went into the big room.
I followed her.
Mom's quilt was on the back of the couch, where I'd left it at five that morning.
The flour-sack one.
Grandma pieced it from feed bags in 1951.
Mom slept under it all fourteen months.
Krista folded it once and pushed it into the bag.
"Goodwill takes these."
I took the bag out of her hand.
I lifted the quilt out and folded it over my arm.
"It's staging, Nell."
"It's Mom's."
"It's a blanket."
"It's Mom's," I said again.
Kaylee had the camera up.
I stepped in front of the lens.
"No pictures in my mother's house."
"Brad booked me for nine," Kaylee said, very quietly.
"I know."
"It's not your fault."
I turned around.
"Krista, give me the key."
Krista laughed.
It was the laugh she used at the bank when somebody's card got declined.
She looked at Kaylee.
Kaylee was looking at the door.
"Glenn found it in Mom's purse," Krista said.
"It's estate property."
"Then Pruitt can ask me for it Tuesday."
I held out my hand.
Palm up.
I learned it from Glenn.
Ten long seconds.
Then Krista dug in her coat pocket and dropped the spare key in my palm.
Brass, no ribbon, warm from her coat.
Kaylee was already folding the ring light.
"I don't shoot houses with people still living in them," she told nobody, and left.
Krista stood in the big room holding an empty garbage bag.
She looked smaller with nothing in it.
She walked out through the kitchen without a word.
On her way, she'd swept the windowsill.
I found the pill organizer in the trash under the sink.
Thursday's lid had popped open.
Little white pills in the coffee grounds.
I picked them out one at a time and put them back.
I don't know why.
It took eleven minutes.
At eleven, a white Silverado came up the gravel with a magnet sign on the door.
HARLAN SWINE PARTNERS — FEEDING IOWA SINCE 1988
Glenn's Tahoe was right behind it.
Brad's truck was behind that.
A man got out of the Silverado in a clean Carhartt jacket that had never met a hog.
Sixty, tan, a handshake face.
Dwight Harlan.
They walked the field edge for half an hour.
I watched from the porch with the quilt on my lap.
Dwight kicked a clod.
He pointed at the tile outlet.
He pointed across the road at the Kruse place, five acres of falling-down hog barns he'd bought last summer.
Then he pointed at the house.
At me.
Voices carry across bean stubble.
They always have.
"Which one's the sister holding it up?"
"Don't worry about her," Glenn said.
"I don't need her."
"I'm the executor."
Brad had his hands deep in his pockets.
"Title's going to want her, Glenn."
The back of Glenn's neck went red, the way it did when Dad caught him with the truck keys in high school.
He turned his back on Brad and kept walking.
Brad didn't follow.
He came and stood at the bottom of the porch steps.
"Twenty-five thousand earnest," he said, low.
"It's sitting in my brokerage trust account."
"Dwight wired it Wednesday."
"Why are you telling me?"
Brad looked at the field.
"Because nobody else is going to."
Glenn yelled for him, and he went.
At noon Dwight shook Glenn's hand by the Tahoe.
Then he walked up to the house alone.
He didn't come up the steps.
Men like Dwight know exactly where the line is, so they can stand on it.
"Miss Ostrander."
"Mister Harlan."
"You kept this place up real nice."
"Mom did."
"Fourteen months in that bed," he said.
"I heard."
He set a business card on the top step.
Embossed.
A little gold pig in the corner.
"I know it's been a hard week."
"So I'll say this plain and get out of your hair."
He smiled at me like we were already neighbors.
"Your mother and I had a deal."