It was a drawing folder. Inside, between crayon pictures of our porch flowers, was a single sheet of lined paper in my father’s handwriting: Rosalind and Wren may live in the carriage house as long as they need. Whatever she fixes is hers. Signed, dated, and folded into quarters.

Wren had taken it out of a kitchen drawer eight months earlier because she liked that her name was written on something, and she had kept it with her drawings the way children keep anything that feels important. She was four when she took it. She was seven when she raised her hand.

Judge Abernathy read it twice. Then he asked my mother to return to the stand and asked her one question: whether she had been aware of the document. She said no. My father did not look up from the table. The eviction was denied, and the court found that eighty-six thousand dollars of improvements had created an equitable interest in the property.