Your grandfather and I bought that house in 1968. It’s paid off. It’s on four acres that the new development wants badly. It’s worth far more than anyone in the family realizes, because I never talked about money, because that’s how I was raised.
Arthur knows what it’s worth. He’s had a developer’s offer in his pocket for a year.
But he can’t sell it while I’m alive and competent and living in it.
So he needed me not competent, and not living in it.
Hence the garden.”
She opened her purse again and took out the envelope. HOUSE DEED, in my grandfather’s handwriting.
“When Arthur started acting strange,” she said, “I did something. I took the real deed and my important papers out of the house file and hid them. Then I put convincing-looking copies back in the drawer where he’d expect to find them.
