PART 3 — BEHIND THE FURNACE
The little key was taped inside the same envelope. I knelt on the cold basement floor and opened the gray cash box.
Inside was a folder of papers and one more note in Marions hand. Months before she passed, she had gone to the town office on her own. She found out that the old rail spur behind our street had been rezoned, and that our little blue house and its double lot were worth nearly three times what Gary kept telling me to take.
The young couple were not strangers who fell in love with the porch. One of them worked for the company buying up the whole block. They knew the number. They were counting on a grieving old man who did not.
Marion could not stop me from being lonely, but she could reach back through seven months and one postcard to stop me from being cheated.
I called the realtor the next morning and said the house was no longer for sale. The closing never happened. A week later a proper appraiser confirmed every word in Marions folder.
I did not sell. Not that summer. I patched the porch, planted her maples along the drive, and let Gary come up and see for himself that his old father was doing just fine.
When I finally did sell, two years later, it was to a young family with three children, for a fair and honest price, and I left Marions Agatha Christie novels on the shelf for the little ones to find. She solved one last case from the other side, and she signed it with a little heart over the i in Hank.