He folded his hands. “What can I do for you today?” he asked, redundantly, because he knew what she must be here for, had known it as soon as his secretary had shown him the name in his appointment calendar.

“I want you to have Jonathon declared legally dead.”

“It’s been seven years now, has it?”

“It has.” Her face was still calm, but he could see her hands tightening over her purse, the leather also polished but worn, like her shoes.

He leaned forward. “I don’t want to offend you, Mrs. Ketchem, but if we’re going to pursue this, we’re going to have to touch on some personal matters, so I’m just going to jump in with both feet.” He softened his voice. “Are you in financial straits? Because-”

“The life insurance company went under. Yes, I know. I got your letter, and another one from them, and I certainly haven’t forgotten either. No, I’m not facing the poor farm.” She glanced down at her out-of-date dress. “Though I suppose that’s another thing folks in this town like to speculate about. Truth is, I’m keeping a Scotsman’s grip on whatever comes in. I want my daughter to go to college.”

He raised his eyebrows. “A laudable ambition.” He touched the file on his desk. “You do realize that if we petition the court of probate to rule Jonathon dead, it won’t be cheap. My retainer alone is one hundred dollars, and there may well be expenses and fees beyond that, depending on how long it takes.”

She nodded. “I know. I asked your secretary what your price was when I asked to see you.”

“Are Mr. and Mrs. Ephraim Ketchem going to join in the petition? To help you with the cost?”

“No.” Her face softened a fraction. “They’d just as soon go on hoping he’ll turn up one day. The good Lord knows I can understand their feelings. There’s nothing hurts as bad as the death of your child, and if they can keep on pretending he’s alive…” She shrugged. “It’s a comfort to them.”

A hard, cold comfort, Niels thought. “Do you worry that you’ll be taking that away from them if we succeed in having Jonathon declared dead?”

She closed her eyes for a moment. He could see the beginnings of fine lines, the slight extra droop where her eyelid would someday sag onto itself. She startled him by opening her eyes and staring directly into his. “I love Mother and Father Ketchem dearly, and I wouldn’t hurt them for the world. But I’ve been saying that my husband is dead for seven years. It’s what I told Chief McNeil the day after Jonathon disappeared, and I knew it was true then as I know it’s true now. They choose to believe otherwise. I don’t think anything I do will change their minds.”

“What about your daughter?”

“Her father disappeared when she was barely six. She missed him something fierce at first, but seven years in a child’s life is forever. I can’t even recall when she last mentioned him. And now she’s getting to an age where she can hear the gossip, and be hurt by it, and I don’t want her to go through what I’ve had to go through.” She let her purse drop flat on her lap and leaned forward, her hands curling over the edge of his desk. “For seven years I’ve been not fish nor fowl nor good red meat. Not a widow and not a wife. Every soul in Millers Kill either pitying me because they think my husband abandoned us or wondering what I did to drive him away. I can’t have a cup of coffee with my brother-in-law or have Father Wallace pay a call without setting tongues clacking all over town. My friend Nain once overheard Tilda Van Krueger saying in the beauty shop that it was mighty convenient having an absent husband, because if I turned up in a family way, I could just claim he stopped back in for a visit.” She took a deep breath. “I want my respectability back, Mr. Madsen. I want to be able to set up a memorial stone for my husband and put him to rest once and for all.”

Niels Madsen thought about his client while he strolled home for a 12:30 dinner with his family. He paused at the walkway to his home, square and roomy and comfortable, and thought about her keeping her own roof over her head instead of moving back in with her parents or in-laws, as so many other women would have done. And when Marion, his oldest, danced past him with the suggestion of a kiss and an “Off to Helen’s house” tossed over her shoulder, he thought about the difficulties facing a single mother of a growing girl.

In the dining room, after a heartfelt thanks over a good lamb stew and quizzing the younger children on how their mornings went at school, he asked his wife if she had ever heard any gossip about Jane Ketchem.

“I heard Mrs. Ketchem took an ax to her husband and buried him under her cellar floor,” ten-year-old Pauline said. “When there’s a full moon, you can hear him moaning, ‘Give me back my head! Give meee back my heeeead!’ ”

Doris, who was eight and still slept with a night-light, shrieked.

“Girls!” Ruth Madsen said. “Quiet down this instant or you’ll both have bread and water in your room. What nonsense.”

The girls giggled, but resumed eating. Mrs. Madsen turned to her husband. “One does hear a few things around town,” she said. She glanced at Normie, who was clearly bristling with something to say but too intent on showing up his sisters with his good manners to just blurt it out. “What is it, Normie?”

“Lacey Ketchem’s in my class,” he said.

“I know that, dear.”

“Well, she says that her father was away on a trip and that he was set upon by desperate men. Probably murderous hoboes who didn’t have a thing to lose. She says that there would have had to be a lot of them, because her father was a big, strong man, and that they killed him and stuffed his body in a tree and set it on fire.”

“Good heavens!” Mrs. Madsen looked at her husband.

He shrugged. “You’re the one who insisted we buy the radio. It’s no wonder all our children sound like announcers for next week’s episode of The Clutching Hand.”

“Can we get down, Mother?”

“Can we get down?”

“May we,” Mrs. Madsen corrected automatically. “Normie, are you finished? I want you to walk your sisters back to school.”

Normie excused himself and pushed his chair away from the table. Niels reached one hand out and took his son’s arm. He looked directly into the boy’s face. “What I was discussing with your mother had to do with the practice. And anything concerning the practice-”

“-is not to be repeated outside this house. I know, Father.”

“Good boy. You can come by the office after school if you like.”

There was a clatter of shoes and a general banging of the door, three, four, five times. Niels had never been able to figure out how three children could sound like a horde of Huns ransacking a town.

Satisfied that their offspring had well and truly departed, he turned to Ruth. “So, what sort of things does one hear around?”

“I’m curious. Why the sudden interest in Jane Ketchem?”

“She’s asked me to petition the court of probate to have her husband declared legally dead.”

Ruth arched her brows. “Interesting.” She broke open a roll and buttered it. “The general consensus among the gossips-not that I’m one of that number, mind.”

“Of course not.”

“Is that Jonathon Ketchem ran off on her. The disagreement is whether he took off because he couldn’t find work, because he had a girl waiting, or because she drove him away.”

“Huh. I hadn’t heard the story about there being another woman involved.”

“Oh, people say he was paying a lot of attention to one of those Henderson girls whose father worked on Ephraim Ketchem’s farm. I forget which one. Evidently, she did leave shortly after he disappeared. Supposedly headed out west to seek her fame and fortune.”

“That makes sense.” He helped himself to another serving of butter beans. “I never could believe it was poverty that made him take off for a shoe-leather divorce. Things were starting to get tight around here in ’30, but the younger Ketchems got a reasonable price for their farm when the dam was being raised. Certainly no worse than anyone else caught up in the shuffle. There should have been enough to buy new land elsewhere or start himself in a business.”