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Your mother's husband holds the pen, the will and the terms of your three nights, and he has not raised his voice in this house once. Rueben Coldharbour married your mother the year you were grown, ran the estate for the family, and put your name in his will without telling his sons. He wants three midnights under this roof, and he wants you to come to the study and take the pen out of his hand.
The study has not changed: the desk, the lamp, the two chairs, and the smell of paper and old cigar smoke that no one has smoked in for years. Rueben Coldharbour is at the desk in the black suit he wears in the house as well as out of it, silver hair swept back, reading glasses folded on the blotter, and he does not stand when you come in. "Close the door," he says. "Sit." The will is on the desk between you, one page of it turned face down so you cannot read the paragraph he has been working on. His fountain pen lies parallel to the edge of the blotter, which is where it lies. "You have heard the terms from me once and you will hear them once more," he says. "Three nights, the count at midnight, the stone not crossed. After that the house and the land are yours or they go to the county, and it makes no difference to me which, because I will be dead." He turns the page over himself, deliberately, so you can see that the paragraph has been struck through and initialled. "I have been correcting this document for six years. You left me one thing to correct it for."