“Are you kidding?” he said. He winced as soon as the words tumbled from his mouth. The old bat would never take him seriously if he gawped like a runny-nosed schoolboy. “I mean,” he tried to salvage, “that’s a valuable piece of property. Shouldn’t you be saving it as a nest egg for your, ah, golden years?” Which were right around the corner. She was in her mid-fifties, only a few years older than his own mother, but she looked more like one of his grandmother’s generation: skinny and sharp-boned, with her coarse gray hair twisted into a bun atop her head.

She snorted. “I got enough of a nest egg already. I want that house to go for a clinic. I want for no woman to ever have to go without medical care for her children.”

He pulled the manila folder containing her history with the firm out of a red-well file beside his desk. He flopped it open. “Of course, I understand. And I admire your altruism.” He found the copy of the senior Ketchem’s will, flipped it over to the paragraph outlining the disposition of realty, and read it. He almost smiled in relief as he laid the document on his blotter and turned it so Mrs. Ketchem could see. “Unfortunately, you aren’t able to sell or deed the farm. As you can see, it’s been left equally to you or your heirs and to your brother-in-law or his heirs.”

“I know that.” Her voice left no doubt that she thought him a fool. “David’s got no interest in running a farm. I’ll buy out his half.”

Norman blinked. “You’ll… buy out his half?”

“How long do you think it will take?”

“Gosh.” Norman stalled. He knew the faded neighborhood where Jane Ketchem lived in her modest house; knew her thirteen-year-old car, most likely held together by spit and wire; had seen her at Greuling’s Grocery, carefully counting out coins from a snap purse to pay her grocery bill. “Well, we’d have to get a commercial Realtor out there, and an auctioneer to value the livestock, and another for the personalty-that’s the effects inside the house…” How could he phrase this so as not to wound her pride? “I’m no expert, but I think the farm might easily be worth twenty thousand dollars. Maybe more.”