The morning they told Ida Voss to leave, the ground was still warm from her husband’s grave.
Two days. That was how long she had been a widow. Two days of black dress and dry eyes and neighbors who looked at her like a problem to be solved.
Ernest Voss had died of the fever on a Tuesday. By Thursday, his brothers had arrived from Durango with a wagon, a surveyor’s ribbon, and a letter from a lawyer none of them had mentioned before the funeral.
The older one, Franklin, read it to her at the kitchen table while the younger one, Cole, stood at the door as though she might run.
\”The land,
