“Money was not his reason,” my father said. He took photos and recorded the exact time, two forty-five, in his ledger.
“The court hearing for final property reconciliation is scheduled for October fourteenth,” I said.
“That gives us eight weeks,” my father said.
“Eight weeks for what?”
“To figure out why he was looking inside those walls,” my father said, pointing his penlight back toward the fireplace.
I slipped the carved wooden rose into my sweater pocket and pushed myself up. My father walked toward the back of the house.
In the kitchen, the brass faucet was running full blast, spraying the lower pine cabinets. I turned the cold water handle hard to the right until the stream stopped.
“Look down by the base of the range,” Arthur said, leaning his hands on his knees.
A thin, dark line of water was bubbling up through the floor seam where two quarter-sawn oak boards met beside the lower oven drawer.
I crouched on the linoleum trim and pressed the pad of my index finger against the dark wood
