Chapter 11 #2
"I appreciate the offer, Mr. Foster," I finally said. "It's generous and more than fair. But I'm not looking to sell."
"No? Not even to flip for a nice profit?"
"No. I bought this place because I wanted to live here and put down roots. Not as an investment."
"I think you're making a terrible mistake."
"Maybe. But it's my mistake to make."
Harlan studied me for a long moment. The smile never wavered. The butterscotch clicked against his teeth.
"Fair enough," he said finally. "Can't blame a man for knowing what he wants. But the offer stands, Thomas. Whenever you're ready. No expiration date."
He reached into his pocket and produced a business card and handed it to me. Heavy cardstock, embossed lettering.
"My number's on there. Call anytime. Day or night."
I nodded, noncommittal. It seemed strange that he would give up so easily. It made me deeply uneasy.
We shook hands again. Same firm grip, same practiced warmth.
"Welcome to the neighborhood," Harlan said. "I hope we'll be good neighbors."
"I'm sure we will."
He walked back to the Land Rover and climbed in. The engine started with a purr that seemed too quiet for something that size. He raised a hand in farewell as he turned down the drive, still smiling.
I watched until the vehicle disappeared into the trees. Stood there a while longer after that, turning the business card over in my fingers.
Twenty years of sitting across deposition tables. Twenty years of reading faces and voices and the spaces between words. Twenty years of knowing when someone was lying, even when I couldn't prove it yet.
Harlan Foster's smile had never reached his eyes. Not once. The warmth, the stories, the reasonable offer-- all of it had been a performance. A good performance, a practiced performance... but a performance nonetheless.
I pocketed the card and went inside.
The cabin felt different now. More solid. I'd spent the past weeks turning it from a shell into something approaching a home.
The kitchen table sat by the window where the morning light was best. Four chairs around it, old but sturdy. A bed in the bedroom with a real mattress instead of the cot and sleeping bag I'd been using. A nightstand beside it, dark oak with brass handles.
And the leather chair by the wood stove.
Dorothy had insisted on that one. She was a sweet woman in her seventies, clearing space in her Port Chasten home after her husband passed. She'd been selling the kitchen table. When I mentioned where I was living, her face lit up.
"The James cabin? Oh, Mark was such a dear man. And that property is just beautiful. My husband and I used to drive out that way sometimes, just to look at the views."
She'd led me through her house to a back room filled with furniture covered in sheets.
"These belonged to my mother-in-law. My husband always meant to donate them, but just couldn't make himself do it. The nightstand is rosewood. Eighteen-nineties, I think. And the chair..."
She pulled back the sheet to reveal a massive leather armchair. Burgundy leather worn soft with age, brass studs along the arms, a chair that would have served in a gentleman's study.
"It's beautiful," I'd said.
"It's yours. Fifty dollars for both pieces. I won't take a penny more."
I'd tried to argue. The chair alone was worth a couple thousand, maybe more. But Dorothy had that stubbornness that certain older women possess, and I'd learned long ago not to fight it.
Now the chair sat beside the wood stove like it had always been there. Like it had been waiting for me.
But furniture wasn't what I needed at the moment.
I went to the second bedroom, the one I'd been using for storage. Cardboard boxes lined the walls, most of them still unpacked. I'd gotten them out of storage on a trip to Seattle. Books. Clothes. The remains of a life I was trying to rebuild from.
The property documents were in a banker's box near the window. I pulled it out and carried it to the kitchen table.
I'd looked at these papers before. When I first bought the place, I'd gone through them the way any buyer does.
Checking that everything matched, making sure I knew what I was getting.
The real estate attorney, a young woman named Patterson who worked out of an office in Sequim, had flagged a few things during the closing.
"Some irregularities in the boundaries," she'd said. "Nothing that affects the title. Just some old survey notations that don't quite line up with the current records. Probably clerical errors from fifty years ago. I see it all the time with rural properties."
I'd accepted that explanation. I hadn't pushed. I was too eager to close, too ready to start the next chapter of my life.
Now I spread the documents across the kitchen table and read them differently.
The survey dated from 1973. Standard form for the era. Metes and bounds description of the property lines. Bearing and distance notations. Reference to a monument at the northeast corner, a concrete post set by the county surveyor.
I traced the boundary with my finger. North along the treeline. East to the creek. South following the water. West back to the starting point.
Then I found it.
A notation in the margin. Handwritten. Faded but legible.
Boundary adjusted per recorded easement, Book 47, Page 312.
I pulled out the deed and compared the two documents. The legal description in the deed didn't match the survey. The northeast corner was different. Twenty feet different.
Twenty feet didn't sound like much. But twenty feet over the length of a property line could mean half an acre. Maybe more.
I found the title insurance policy and flipped to the exceptions schedule. There it was, buried in the boilerplate.
Easement recorded in Book 47, Page 312, in favor of Foster Family Trust.
Foster.
I sat back in the chair. Stared at the documents spread across the table.
Claire had refused to sell to Harlan Foster. Harlan said she held a grudge. A misunderstanding.
Maybe. Maybe not.
I pulled out my phone and photographed the boundary notation. Then the deed discrepancy. Then the title exception. Set each document aside as I finished with it.
I didn't know yet what any of it meant. Easements were common in rural areas. Access rights. Utility corridors. Water sharing agreements. My own driveway was an easement through Claire's acreage. There could be a perfectly innocent explanation.
But Harlan Foster had stood in my clearing and told me stories about hunting this land with Mark James. About sitting on the porch and drinking whiskey. About loving this place like it was his own.
And then he offered to buy it from me. Offered more than I paid. Said the offer would stand forever.
People didn't do that without reasons. Good reasons or bad ones, but reasons.
I gathered the documents and put them back in the box. Then I went back outside and picked up the splitting maul.
The woodshed wouldn't repair itself. The drainage problems Harlan mentioned were probably real. The siding, the well pump, the septic system, all of it was waiting for me.
But now I had something else waiting, too. Questions that needed answering.
What exactly had Harlan Foster done to make Claire James sell her father's cabin to a stranger rather than let it fall into his hands?
I swung the maul and split a round of alder in two. The crack echoed off the trees.
I'd find out. One way or another.