Cold autumn rain drummed against the tall leaded glass windows up near the ceiling.

Arthur laid a microfiber cloth on the oak counter, polished his thin wire-rimmed glasses, and pushed a heavy leather binder in blue legal backs toward me.

“Look at entry forty-two on page seven,” he said in his slow, dry, scholarly way.

I leaned over the counter and ran my eyes along the line.

“That’s the Pine Street deed.”

“It’s a second mortgage recorded fourteen months back,” Arthur said.

“Your father borrowed three hundred and fifty thousand dollars against the house.”