The rental car manages the last two miles of gravel road only in first gear. Whispering Pines Ranch, says the sign on the gate, in letters my grandfather must have burned himself. I've seen him twice. Now half of everything he left behind belongs to me.
The man on the porch doesn't get up when I step out. He sits in a chair, hat tipped back, watching me cross the yard in my city boots. "You're the granddaughter," he says. "Ida," I say. "Cole," he says. He says nothing more.
Cole is exactly what the word foreman implies: hat, dust, forearms, a face that has decided about me before I've opened the door. He doesn't come over. He lets me walk to him in shoes that were a mistake.
"I'm not selling," he says, before I've even set down my bag. "I haven't said anything yet." – "You have a gallery in London. You're here to sign and leave." He's right. I hate that he's right.
“I'm Ida.” I hold out my hand. He looks at it, then shakes it, once, briefly, as if he's checking whether I'll flinch at the calluses. I don't. My grandmother was a sculptor. I know what working hands feel like.
“Your grandfather said you'd come to sell,” he says. “I told him you'd come to look first. One of us owes the other a beer.” He straightens. “You can't sell without me. I'm not signing. So you can look all you want.”
Later, at the fence, with the wind coming down from the mountains, he stands beside me. "Four weeks," he says. "That's how long the court needs. Stay that long, and then tell me again that you want to sell." He holds out his hand, like you close a deal, without a smile.
