The man in the windbreaker asked for him by name at the register, loud enough that the whole counter got it for free, and Cal signed for the envelope standing up with the pen braced against his own knuckles. Orlean set the pot down on the warmer without pouring the two cups she'd been holding it for.

The top line said Notice of Acceleration. Then it said noon. Then it said a number with six figures in it, and no part of that number belonged to a house with a bad porch step.

One flat note of a laugh got out of him. "Noon on the fourth. Somebody's in a hurry all of a sudden. Must be a real situation over there at Lakeview."

Orlean put a fresh cup by his hand and made him take it in order. First the man, then the envelope, then his own signature standing up, then the words she'd read off the top. Cal pressed his thumb into the knuckle of his other hand and kept it there. His palm went over the jacket pocket for keys he could already feel in it, and he went out through the thin cold rain to the truck.

He got in and didn't start it. The rain came in along the bad door seal and the paper on the dash went dark at one corner while he sat there. Five days gone off the count, and nobody had sent word ahead of them. He thought about how quick a dead man signs things when nobody is standing over him with a pen.

So he got out, and instead of the county road he took the walk to the recorder's office. He folded the Notice along the creases it came with, and unfolded it, and folded it again while the clerk finished with the woman ahead of him.

"I need the death certificate on file for an Arthur R. Vane," he said. "And whatever probate's been opened. Public record, right?"

The clerk said, plain and at counter volume, that nothing had been filed, that the county release was flagged and unsigned, and that there was no probate to open. A woman in shirtsleeves near the window stopped writing.

The phone stayed at Marguerite's ear after the attorney had quit saying anything worth hearing, and her hands did not leave the arms of the chair. She turned the rings on her right hand one full circuit, and then a second, and dialed him back.

She cut across his opening before he could finish it. "You'll tell me if I'm wrong to think nobody moves that date without my name on it first. Walk it back to the ninth, quietly, today, and tell me whose idea it was to try me without asking."

He gave her the servicer liaison, and whose say-so the man had been working under, and she hung up while he was still agreeing.

Hollis got the other voice, the unhurried one, and his boy's season before he could get his question out whole. A clerical slip, she told him, already being fixed. Nobody in this town would let a mistake like that stand near a family she'd loved before he was old enough to spell it.

She did not ask how a stranger's signature came to sit where hers had sat for thirty years. Asking would have told them it had moved her.

She sent Royal out for the car and said it was for air. On the porch, with him twenty feet off at the driver's door and the engine not yet turning, she got the cap off the bottle and swallowed the thing that kept her hands steady enough to turn the rings at all.

Junie woke in the second chair with her coat still on and her keys locked in her fist, and nobody had come. Through the corridor glass the hearse sat at the mouth of the lot with its engine off.

On the family-room phone the funeral man gave her his whole name and then every call in his book, one at a time, the examiner's and her own, each with the minute on it. The release was unsigned. He asked her twice whether the family understood he had done everything correctly.

She went to the charge desk with the keys still in her fist. "The funeral home says the release is still unsigned. I'm Arthur Vane's niece. I need the name of the person authorized to sign it, and I'm staying here until that decision is made."

The charge nurse logged something, said the family room, and turned back to two live phones. Junie was afraid, and she stood there anyway, with her fist shut around the keys.

On the board behind the desk, bay two carried a name that was not Arthur's. She read it and said nothing, because the second she asked about that name she'd stop being the one owed an answer about her uncle.

They walked her back down the hall without giving her the name she'd asked for. The waitress's thermos was where she'd left it, unopened.

At the records window Ivy laid her own handwritten page down flat, before she touched the terminal at all. "Sorry, my pull's already logged, page four, I can bring that instead."

The tech didn't look up. She unclipped her badge and clipped it again and said it a second time, page four, I can bring that, and he took the page without raising his head. Her bag sat in the window's reflection. Four months, she thought, and kept looking at it.

Then she turned from the window before he could answer and went down the corridor to the family room.

Junie was asleep sitting up with her coat on, so Ivy crouched to her eye level instead of shaking her. She tucked the same piece of hair behind the same ear, and then did it again.

"Junie. Junie, hey. You're okay, I'm right here. Nobody's come for you yet, that's on me."

She didn't look at her watch a third time.