Chapter 2

“Mom, take them back.”

Beryl pushed the property title and the bankbook into my hands. I didn't take them.

“Don't fight with my brothers over me. Great-Uncle Silas and the others won't let this go. Cross the clan in this village and the two of us won't be able to take a single step.”

I looked at her, remembering how I'd married her off in my last life without even giving her a decent quilt to take with her.

What I said was that a married-off daughter is like water thrown out the door. What I was thinking was the money I could save for my three sons.

I pushed her out just like that, and in all her life she never once came to me asking for a single cent.

And in the end she was the one who borrowed three hundred dollars and knelt in the mud of the pigsty to see me off.

“Beryl, your mother was blind before.”

“From now on, you're the only child of my blood I claim.”

“The clan can go to hell. As long as we have money and we're in the right, no one can crush us.”

I didn't sleep that night. I waited until Beryl was fast asleep in the inner room, then reached under the bed and pulled out a ledger.

The pages were packed tight with writing, some of it blurred with age, but every page ended with a red thumbprint.

That had been my habit for decades. Every dollar that went out, I wrote it down and pressed my thumb to it.

My three sons had always laughed at me for going to all that trouble. Now the ledger was about to earn its keep.

At first light I woke Beryl, told her to put on clean clothes, and got ready to go into town for the transfer.

I'd barely pulled the courtyard gate open when a row of people blocked the way.

Winston stood at the front, with the village head, Alex Gray, behind him, and seven or eight gray-haired clan uncles besides.

Winston's wife dropped straight down into the mud, slapping her thighs and wailing.

“Come judge this, all of you! The old woman's lost her mind. She wants to hand the family property to an outsider! She's trying to wipe out the Finch line!”

Great-Uncle Silas thumped his cane against the flagstone, and his voice cut over Julia Clayton's wailing.

“Mrs. Finch, you've thrown out the rules! Property passes to sons, not daughters. The ancestors set it down that way!”

“If you don't produce that title today and hand it to Winston to hold for the family, we'll strike you from the clan register, and you won't be allowed into the ancestral graves when you die.”

The clan uncles nodded in unison, every one of them fixing me with an elder's glare.

I turned, went back inside, and came out with the ledger.

“You want to judge this? Fine. Let me read it out for you.”

I made my voice loud on purpose, loud enough for half the lane to hear.

“Nineteen ninety-eight, Winston got married. Betrothal gifts and the banquet, two hundred thousand. I hauled bricks at the kiln for three years to scrape it together. Red thumbprint, right here.”

“Two thousand three, Jayden bought a used truck to run freight. A hundred thousand. I mortgaged my pension for it. Red thumbprint, right here.”

“Two thousand six, Albert got into a fight and had to pay the other man's medical bills. A hundred and fifty thousand. I poured in the money that was meant to save your father's life. Red thumbprint, right here.”

“Over a dozen years, the three of them sucked four hundred and fifty thousand out of me. Great-Uncle Silas, do the math for me. Principal and interest, how much do they owe?”

No one in the courtyard said a word.

I swept my eyes over the clan uncles.

“You want rules? I want rules too.”

“All these years, I'm the one who's given them money. They never gave me back a single cent.”

“Have them cough up that four hundred and fifty thousand, principal and interest. The day the money's in my hand, I'll hand over the title with both hands.”

“If they can't produce the money, then every last one of you can shut up.”

Great-Uncle Silas's lips trembled for a long moment, and not one word came out.

Winston glanced at the village head, and the village head put his hands behind his back too.

“I came meaning to talk sense by the old customs, but now that I've heard all these accounts……”

“Even an honest judge can't settle a family's affairs……”

Seeing they'd lost the nerve they'd come in with, I took Beryl by the hand and started out the gate.

Albert's voice came from behind me.

“Mom, that sickly husband of Beryl's is still lying in the county hospital, kept alive on a ventilator.”

Beryl's hand jerked back.

“What if I went to the hospital to talk over his condition with the doctors, pull a tube or two, or the hospital happened to cut off his medication……”

I gripped Beryl's arm and stared Albert down.

He thought he'd finally gotten a hold on me.

“Mom, think it over again.”