Chapter 7 - The Ink on the Pine
The pen was a heavy, silver-plated Parker that Arthur Vance had carried since his election to the county bar in nineteen-sixty-eight. It did not scratch; it laid down a thick, wet line of black ink that looked like fresh tar against the white bond paper.
Ryan’s hand was shaking so badly that the first stroke of his name—the long, looping R he had practiced on a thousand corporate delivery receipts—hooked into the margin, tearing a tiny crescent through the surface of the paper.
He signed four times.
Once on the quitclaim.
Once on the confession of judgment.
Once on the re-assignment of the lease for the cottage on Mill Street, terminating the agreement and directing the return of the four-thousand-five-hundred-dollar deposit directly to the trust account at the First Northern Bank.
And once on a single, half-sheet of yellow paper that Peter Vance had written out by hand while his father was reading the municipal bond.
"What's that one?" Ryan asked, his voice cracking like dry kindling.
Peter didn't look up from his legal pad. "That’s the voluntary surrender of parental rights for the purpose of the initial custody determination under Section 767. You are agreeing that the child’s legal domicile remains with the mother, that you have no authority to remove her from the jurisdiction of Ozaukee and Waukesha counties, and that any visitation is supervised by a court-appointed social worker until you have completed twenty-six weeks of an approved psychological assessment."
Ryan dropped the silver pen. It rolled across the pine table, leaving three small, black dots on the wood before coming to rest against the edge of the salt cellar.
"You're taking my daughter," he whispered.
"No," Diane Mitchell said from her place beside the stove. She had not sat down once during the entire hour the men had been in the room. "You gave her away, Ryan. When you took her college money to rent a bed in Cedarburg, you told everyone in this county that you weren't a father. You were just a man who had an accident in the dark."
She walked over to the table, took the silver pen, and signed her own name on the line labeled Witness. Her script was large, upright, the letters rounded and firm, the way they had taught the girls to write at the normal school in Whitewater sixty years ago.
"Peter," Diane said, handing the papers to the judge. "Take these to the register’s office tonight. Use the side door by the sheriff’s annex."
"I have the key," Peter said.
He gathered the documents, slid them into the black expanding file, and tied the red ribbon with a single, practiced tug. He stood up, nodded once to his father, then looked down at his cousin.
"You have until midnight to get your clothes out of the house in Elm Grove, Ryan," Peter said. "After midnight, the lock on the side door is being changed by the boy from the hardware store. If you are on the property when the sun comes up, the deputies will pick you up at the end of the driveway, and I will personally sign the warrant for the trespass."
He didn't wait for an answer. He took his coat from the peg and walked out into the dark, the gravel rattling beneath his soles as he went to the car.
The house seemed to sink three inches into its footings when the door clicked shut.
Arthur Vance stood by the table for another minute, looking down at the empty chairs, the half-rolled pink runner on the floor, and the pewter box with the name Ella cut into its lid.
"Your father would have been eighty-four on Tuesday, Diane," the old man said quietly.
"I know," she replied.
"He was an honest man. A hard man, but an honest one."
"Yes," she said.
He turned to me. He reached out and touched my swollen wrist with the tips of his cold, rough fingers.
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"You have forty acres of good clover in Green Bay, Hannah," the old man said. "Don't let them tell you it isn't worth anything because the dairy died. A girl who owns forty acres and her own roof doesn't need to ask any man if she’s allowed to sit on the porch."
He pulled his sheepskin coat around his neck, took his hat from the counter, and walked out after his son, leaving the three of us alone in the yellow light.
