Chapter 14 - The Meeting at the County Clerk's
The Barry County Courthouse in Hastings always smelled of radiator dust, old pine oil cleaner, and damp wool coats. By nine the next morning, Ellis and I stood before the clerk's counter on the second floor, waiting for the docket copy of the emergency motion.
Before the clerk could retrieve the file, the heavy brass door handle turned behind us.
My father walked in, accompanied by Arthur Pendelton. Pendelton was carrying a scuffed leather briefcase, his tie loosened at his neck, smelling faintly of stale cigars. My father had a small, self-satisfied smirk playing on his lips—the very same look he had worn at my wedding reception right before his palm struck my cheek in front of two hundred guests.
"You should have stayed out by the river, Abigail," my father said, leaning against the counter as if he owned the marble floor beneath us. "Living in that drafty cabin, playing house with a sawmill hand. It’s unseemly for a Vance."
Ellis didn't raise his voice. He didn't step forward. He simply turned his broad shoulders, shifting his posture so that his presence filled the doorway, cutting off Pendelton's line of sight to the hallway.
"The only thing unseemly in this county," I said, looking straight into my father's bloodshot eyes, "is a grown man who owes sixty thousand dollars to the feed co-op trying to steal his daughter's timber to pay his bar tab."
Pendelton cleared his throat awkwardly. "Now see here, Mrs. Miller, this is an official legal proceeding—"
"Shut up, Arthur," I cut him off, my voice echoing off the high plaster ceiling. Several clerks stopped typing and looked up from behind their partitions. "I saw your notary book in the basement archives before you walked in. You didn't record Sanford's codicil in the county register on November fourth. You recorded it yesterday afternoon, backdated in blue ballpoint ink over a cancelled title deed for a 1984 farm trailer."
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Pendelton’s face went the color of curdled milk.
My father’s smirk hardened into a vicious line. "You think you're clever, little girl. But paper takes months to fight through Lansing. By the time you get a hearing with a real judge, your mill will be locked with county chains, and your boy Ellis will be begging for day labor in Kalamazoo."
