“Half the size is plenty,” I said.

He didn’t answer.

I picked up Evelyn’s reading glasses, put them in my jacket pocket and rose from the table.

Brandon sat by himself in the big room, his hands flat beside the papers, staring at the signed corporate title documents spread over the table and saying nothing at all.

Three days after the settlement meeting at Margaret’s law office, I was sitting on the little covered balcony of my seaside apartment, forty miles south of Oakridge.

The late afternoon air off the water had the sharp, damp bite of late autumn, but I stayed outside in my heavy wool cardigan.