My father had paid off the Birch Street mortgage twenty years earlier.

The deed should have been one clean page showing the house owned free and clear.

Instead, a bright pink attachment was stapled right to the corner of the county record.

“What’s this filing here?” I asked.

Susan leaned over and turned the ledger around to read the small print.

“That’s a commercial lien,” she said.

“For fifty thousand dollars.”

I ran my finger over the raised seal in the bottom right corner.