Chapter 15 - The Last Mortgage
The drive back to Portage County was quiet, but the air inside the truck felt lighter, as if a window had been opened after a long winter of closed shutters. The sun was dipping below the horizon, painting the flat Ohio fields in shades of deep purple and burning orange.
When we pulled into the gravel drive of the service station, the bays were already dark, but the lights in the small office were burning bright. Harold Finch was standing by the front window with a cup of black coffee in his hand, watching for our headlights.
As I killed the engine, Harold stepped out into the cold evening air, pulling his flannel jacket tighter around his chest.
"Well?" Harold asked, walking over to the driver’s side window as I rolled it down. "Did the state boys give you any more trouble in Ravenna?"
"The state boys are looking in the wrong direction, Harold," I said, stepping out of the truck and stretching my back. My hip gave a tiny, painless pop. "And David Keller won't be bothering us anymore either."
Harold let out a long whistle, a slow grin spreading across his weathered face. "Keller? I thought that old thief retired to the river thirty years ago with his pockets full of developer cash."
"Turns out he left a few forwarding addresses in our county ledgers," Arden said, stepping out of the passenger side with her briefcase in hand. She looked tired, but for the first time in as long as I could remember, her shoulders were entirely relaxed. "He’s signing the quitclaim tomorrow morning. By noon, every trace of Sterling’s liens will be wiped clean from the property titles."
"Well, I'll be," Harold muttered, shaking his head with deep admiration. "Eleanor, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again—you should have been running the county commissioners' board back in eighty-five."
"If I had been running it, Harold, you’d have had to pay twice as much for your municipal truck repairs," I retorted with a dry smile.
We walked together toward the warm glow of the office. Inside, Toby was sitting at the wooden counter, coloring in a superhero book while Dave the locksmith’s wife kept an eye on him from the parts desk.
"Grandma!" Toby yelled the moment the door swung open, dropping his crayon and running over to wrap his arms around my knees. "We finished the inventory! Uncle Harold let me put the new spark plugs on the top shelf!"
"Did you now?" I said, lifting him up effortlessly and setting him on the counter. "Well, that deserves a celebration. Who wants hot chocolate?"
"Me!" Toby shouted, throwing his hands in the air.
Arden stood by the counter, watching her son laugh as Harold went to the back room to fire up the electric kettle. She looked around the bright, bustling service bay—the polished concrete floor, the heavy steel jacks, the calendar with a picture of a vintage tractor hanging on the wall—and then looked down at her own hands.
The hands of a woman who had built her life back from the ashes, one rivet at a time.
"Mom," Arden said softly, walking over to stand beside me. "What do we do now? No liens. No lawyers. Just... us."
I looked out the large front window toward the dark, rolling pastures stretching out toward the horizon under a sky full of cold, bright winter stars.
"Now," I said, putting my arm around her shoulder, "we open the shop tomorrow morning at seven sharp. And if a man in an Italian suit tries to pull into the drive, you hand him a grease gun and tell him there’s a Ford F-250 out back with a seized transmission that needs his attention."
May you like
Arden laughed—a clean, bright sound that echoed off the high ceiling of the garage, drowning out the ghost of every winter that had ever tried to freeze us out.
***
