“The corporate board meets next week,” I said.

“There is no corporate board for you, Avery,” Victoria said, turning her sharp face toward the lake.

“You were an act of pity my husband carried for twenty years, and the pity ended when we buried him.”

She walked past me down the wooden steps, her heels clicking loudly on the stone path back to the main house.

I folded the quitclaim in half and put it in my jacket pocket.

By three o’clock, the sky over the strip mall on Route 9 had turned the color of wet slate.