At ten that night, Fletcher Wynn called from his home. Janet had sent him the executed contract and the escrow instructions, and his bank's closing department was reviewing the payoff requirements for the next morning. Fletcher said he could not promise that a proposed transfer would be enough to cancel the sale, but he was coordinating with the bank's foreclosure counsel and would be in his office early. Kora thanked him even though his careful answer made her want to shout.
"Mrs. Halstead," he said before hanging up, "I hope you understand I'm doing everything I can within the bank's requirements."
"I understand," she said. "And I hope you understand why those requirements have been the loudest thing in my life for three months."
He did not pretend he knew exactly how she felt. "Yes," he said quietly. "I think I do."
Kora drove home with Caleb through a cold, clear night. The truck smelled of feed dust, and the road toward Cedar Hollow was so familiar that she could have driven parts of it with her eyes closed, though she would never have risked doing so. As they turned through the gate, she saw the auction notice posted beside the driveway, a formal sheet protected under clear plastic. The sight of it nearly undid all the relief she had felt at the hearing.
She stopped the truck and walked over. The notice listed the address, the acreage, and the time as if the land were only a set of measurements. She knew the bend in the creek that had no name on any map, the shade beneath the old pear tree, and the place where Aaron had once tripped while carrying a birthday cake and almost dropped it into the grass. She knew the patch of earth where Caleb had planted a bean in kindergarten and asked every morning why it was not growing faster.
"Don't take it down yet," Caleb said from behind her.
Kora turned. "Why not?"
"Because when this is done, I want to know exactly what we stopped."
She looked at him for a long moment. Then she left the notice in place and went to feed the birds.
Neither slept much. At half past midnight, Amelia's counsel confirmed that the legal restrictions had been cleared from the closing conditions. Shortly after one, the cooperative's finance committee authorized the final release of funds for the next banking day. At three in the morning a minor discrepancy appeared between the payoff statement and the escrow schedule, caused by an additional daily interest amount; Janet and Fletcher's staff corrected it before the wire instructions were finalized. Each problem was small enough to sound ordinary, but Kora knew that any one of them could become enormous if it delayed the transaction past nine.