Mrs. Fisk and I went to the window. There was a light on upstairs in my mothers house. We called the sheriff, and he came, and it was my brother, down from Atlanta a day early, going through Mamas bedroom with a flashlight. Looking, it turned out, for the very thing under the loose board.
Under the cedar chest, under the board my father set in 1968, was a steel box. Inside was the deed to the house, a second document, and a letter.
The house had never really been the neighbors. Mama had asked Mrs. Fisk to hold it in name only, on paper, so my brother would believe it was gone and stop circling. The real deed left it to me. The second document explained why my brother stopped coming home after Daddys funeral. He had forged Daddys signature on a loan in 2009, using the house as collateral, and Mama had quietly paid it off and kept the proof, in case he ever came for the house again.
Mama lied to the whole family and gave her house to the neighbor so that the son who forged his own fathers name could never get his hands on it.
With the sheriff already there, it did not take long. The deed and Mamas documents made the house mine, free and clear, the way she always meant it to be. My brother had no claim, and once he understood what Mama had kept, he got in his car and drove back to Atlanta without a word.
Mrs. Fisk signed the house back over to me the next morning, crying the whole time, and told me my mama was the finest friend she ever had. I live in the house on Chestnut Street now. Eleven years was not for nothing after all.