Ardell handed me the accounting at the end of Mom’s lane, standing beside his car with the engine still running, like it was a policy renewal he needed signed before lunch.
It was the third Saturday of September. I had been at the farm since seven that morning, and my jeans were gray to the knee with dust from the machine shed.
“It’s just the interim,” he said. “The lawyer wants us both to see it before the auction. Nothing you need to do. Just look it over.”
I looked it over right there by the mailbox, with the beans turning brown in the field across the road and a grain truck rattling past toward the elevator in Roanoke.
Most of it was what I expected. The funeral home. The headstone deposit. The lawyer’s retainer. Two months of electric to keep the well pump running and the furnace from freezing.
Then, near the bottom, in the same neat typeface as everything else, one line: “Clean-out and estate labor, executor, $23,000.”
I read it twice. I read it a third time, because I thought maybe there was a decimal point hiding somewhere I had missed.
“Ardell,” I said, “what is this?”
He leaned over to see where my finger was. “That’s my fee. The executor’s fee. It’s allowed, Ang. The lawyer said it’s standard. Denise looked it up too.”
“Clean-out,” I said. “It says clean-out.”
“Well, it covers everything. Getting the house ready. Getting the estate ready. It’s all one job.” He checked his watch. “I’ve got Logan’s game at two. Just look it over and call me if you have questions.”
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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