The locksmith stopped before the sheriff arrived. He asked for proof of ownership, the way any licensed one will, and my father produced a listing agreement instead of a deed. That agreement is how I learned the rest. My brother Caleb had signed it eleven days earlier as the seller, using a legal description he had copied out of an old probate file, because our grandfather’s original parcel had carried a similar number and my father had convinced himself, and then the realtor, that the foreclosure I bought was family land returning to the family. It was not. It had never belonged to us. It had belonged to a bank since 2019 and to me since March.

The sheriff took eleven minutes to come up the road and about ninety seconds to read the recorded deed off his own phone. Nobody was arrested that morning. The realtor withdrew the listing before she left the property and reported it herself, which cost Caleb his licence to sell anything for three years.