I unfolded my husbands little map with my one good eye, and the two words in his careful German handwriting under the X by the springhouse meant the true deed.
My husband had buried a strongbox under the springhouse the week before he died. When the deputy drove out, respectful and gentle the way you are with Old Order folks, I told him where to look, and he and Jacob the neighbor boy dug it up.
Inside was the original recorded deed, and the bill of sale from 2001, the year Abners family sold this farm out of the family. Signed. Witnessed. Final. They sold it willingly, for good money, and my husband kept the proof because he knew, even then, that someday they might tell themselves a different story.
That is why Abners old mother wore the last old key on a string around her neck. In her heart she still believed the farm was theirs. But belief is not a deed, and a key to a lock I can change is not ownership.
They did not come to steal, exactly. They came because they never made peace with selling the place. But peace is not made by moving back into someone elses house.
The bill of sale ended the legal question in an afternoon. The farm was mine, bought back in August for two hundred eighty-nine thousand, the farm my husband grew up on, that I bought for his memory.
But there was one more thing in the strongbox. A letter, from my husbands mother, the one whose key Abners mother wore. In it she forgave the whole quarrel of 1994 and asked both sides of the family to make peace before they met her in the ground.
So I did not run Abners family off with the law and leave it there. Once the deed was plain and the farm was secure, I had them to my table. I read them that letter. The two old women cried. We did not become one family again in a day, but the horses went home, and the buggies went home, and now and again now they come for supper, as guests, which is a thing I never thought I would live to see.