Courthouse Friday

The man in the doorway has mud on his boots, and he doesn't apologize for it.

You notice that first, because you're a lawyer and lawyers notice things. Then you notice the rest of him, and your carefully prepared opening remarks fall straight out of your head.

He's tall enough to duck under the frame of Merle Brandvold's office door. Broad through the chest and shoulders in a sheepskin-lined canvas jacket, a battered gray felt hat in one rough hand. Sun-streaked brown hair that needs a cut. A hard jaw, a day of stubble. And eyes so blue they look like somebody cut two pieces out of the Montana sky you flew through this morning and set them in his face.

He looks at you exactly once. It's not a friendly look.

"Colt," says Merle Brandvold, rising from behind his desk. He's seventy-one, in a bow tie and a cardigan, half-moon glasses on his nose. "Thank you for coming. This is Mavis's great-niece. Ava Mrozek, from Chicago."

"Hi." You stand and hold out your hand, because your mother raised you right. "It's nice to meet you."

He looks at your hand. Then at your red wool coat, your heeled boots with the little gold buckles, the leather briefcase on the chair beside you.

"Ma'am," he says, and sits down in the chair farthest from yours.

You lower your hand. Okay.

Outside the window, the town of Ember Creek is doing its best impression of a postcard. One main street, a hardware store downstairs, a café across the road with a tin coffee cup painted on the glass. Beyond the roofs, mountains, real ones, their tops already white. You've been here three hours and you've seen more pickup trucks than people.

"Well," Merle says, and settles his glasses. "Let's get to it."

You didn't know Mavis Mrozek Sayles. That's the strange part, the part you keep explaining to everybody, including yourself on the plane.

You knew she existed the way you know a country exists on a map. Your grandfather's older sister, who ran off to Montana in the fifties and was never mentioned at Christmas. A birthday check when you were nine, with a card that had a horse on it. You wrote her a thank-you note because your grandmother made you. That was it. That was the whole relationship.

Then, three weeks ago, a letter on heavy cream paper arrived at Kessendorf & Marquardt, where you bill sixty hours a week in a glass office in the Loop. Your presence is respectfully requested at the reading of the last will and testament.

So here you are. Taking two personal days you can't afford to inherit, you assume, a box of old photographs and maybe a quilt.

Merle reads in a slow, careful voice. Small bequests first. The church. The animal shelter. Somebody named Arturo Villalobos gets a saddle and a truck and five thousand dollars, and Colt's jaw tightens like he's trying not to feel something.

Then Merle turns a page.

"To my great-niece, Ava Mrozek of Chicago, Illinois, I leave my one-half interest in Larch Hollow Ranch, being approximately twenty-four hundred acres of the forty-eight hundred acres held in partnership with Colt Branson, together with my cabin, its contents, and all appurtenant water rights."

You stop breathing.

Across the room, Colt Branson turns his head slowly and looks at you like you've just walked into his house and started rearranging the furniture.

"I'm sorry," you say. "Half of a ranch?"

"There's a condition," Merle says, and clears his throat, and for the first time looks a little uncomfortable. "I'll read it as written. 'This gift is conditional. Within seven days of the reading of this will, my great-niece shall marry Colt Branson in a lawful civil ceremony. Thereafter, the two of them shall reside together in the main house at Larch Hollow for twelve consecutive months, neither being absent from the ranch more than fourteen nights in a row. My executor shall certify their residence each quarter. Should these conditions fail, my one-half interest shall be sold at market, and my executor shall accept the highest offer.'"

Silence.

A truck goes by outside. Somewhere downstairs, somebody is cutting a key.

"No," Colt says.

It's the most words he's said since he walked in, and he says it to Merle, not to you. Flat. Final. He's already reaching for his hat.

"Excuse me," you say. "I think that's my line."

He glances at you. Something moves in those blue eyes, irritation, maybe, or surprise that you talk back.

"Then say it," he says, "and we can all go home."

"No," you say to Merle. "Obviously no. This can't be enforceable. Conditions in restraint of marriage..."

"Are generally void," Merle agrees mildly. "Conditions encouraging a marriage are a different matter in Montana, Ms. Mrozek. I looked into it. At length. Mavis made sure I did."

"I live in Chicago. I have a job. I have a trial in March."

"She knew all of that." Merle takes off his glasses and polishes them. "She knew a great deal about you."

That makes the back of your neck prickle. You open your mouth to ask what that means.

The bell over the street door jingles downstairs. Footsteps on the stairs, unhurried and expensive-sounding. And then a man walks into Merle's office carrying an enormous bouquet of white lilies, like this is a funeral and he's the only one who remembered.

He's handsome in a way that costs money. Mid-forties, silver at the temples, a ski tan in October, a shearling coat that probably has its own insurance policy. His smile is warm and perfect and lands on you first.

"You must be the niece," he says. "I'm so sorry for your loss. Dalton Crewe." He sets the lilies on Merle's desk. "Merle. Colt."

Colt doesn't stand. He doesn't speak. But every muscle in him has gone still in a way that makes you think of a dog that has just seen a coyote at the fence.

"I won't stay," Crewe says. "I only wanted the executor to know my offer stands. Four point two million for Mavis's half, cash, the day it comes to market." He turns that warm smile on you. "I imagine a ranch is the last thing a Chicago attorney needs. I'd make it painless."

"And Colt's half?" you hear yourself ask.

Crewe's smile doesn't move. "Oh, Colt and I will work something out. My company holds the note on his half now. We're practically partners already." He nods to Colt like a man nodding to a fence post. "Take care of that little girl."

He leaves. The lilies stay, sweet and sickly in the warm room.

Nobody says anything for a long moment.

Then Colt Branson stands up. He puts on his hat. He looks at the lilies, and at the window, where a black SUV is pulling away from the curb, and finally, finally, at you.

You see it happen. You see him do the math, and hate the answer.

"Fine," he says. "Courthouse Friday."