Next to it, Nate laid a clear plastic sleeve holding the stub of a forty-thousand-dollar cashier’s check and seventy-five carbon tip receipts from Patty’s Truck Stop Diner that still smelled faintly of fryer oil.

Then he picked up the small wooden frame I had just hung by the front door and laid it face up right beside the tax deed.

Inside was the bluebird greeting card Judy had handed us at Easter two years earlier.

Ron leaned forward, his heavy eyebrows drawing together into a deep crease as he looked down at the red county seal.

“What’s this paperwork?” Ron asked.