Colin did not ask why. Not at first.
He listened while Winnie explained it, all of it, standing in her kitchen with the four crosswords in her hand. When she finished, he was quiet for a long moment.
"Mrs. Lavoie," he said. "We have a press. We have paper. I can print four hundred copies by tonight." He paused. "But who's going to make the puzzle?"
"I am," Winnie said.
"Can you?"
"Colin," Winnie said, "I set two thousand of Elmer Gaudette's crosswords by hand. I know how he thinks. I know what words he likes. I know he hates abbreviations and loves farm words. He'll know it's me before he finishes the first row."
She went down to the Courier office at three o'clock with a pad of graph paper and four sharp pencils.
It took her five hours.
It had to look like an ordinary puzzle. An ordinary Courier crossword, with ordinary clues, so that a nephew from Connecticut who did not do crosswords would not look at it twice. It had to fit in the space where the crossword always ran. It had to be good enough that Elmer would want to finish it.
And it had to have circles.
At eight o'clock that night, she handed it to Colin. He read the circled letters out loud, slowly.
SAY NO AT SIGNING. WINNIE.
"That's it?" he said.
"That's all he needs," Winnie said. "He has to be the one to say it. The deputy told me so."
Colin printed a special edition of the Ashby Valley Courier that night. Four pages. A story about the fall foliage, a list of church suppers, the school lunch menu, and a crossword puzzle by "Guest Constructor W.L."
At six o'clock on Friday morning, Winnie drove up Gaudette Hill Road herself, in the dark, and put a copy in the newspaper tube at the bottom of Elmer's lane.
Then she drove back down and sat in her car at the bottom of the hill, and waited.
At six-forty, the porch light came on. A tall man in a sweatshirt walked down the lane, yawning, took the paper out of the tube without looking at it, and walked back up.
Winnie let out her breath.
Trevor always brought his uncle the paper. Elmer had always done the crossword with his coffee. Seventy years of habit. She was counting on it.
The closing was at ten o'clock at a lawyer's office in Brattleboro, forty minutes away.
Winnie was there at nine-thirty. She sat in the waiting room in her church coat with her pocketbook in her lap. The receptionist asked if she had an appointment. Winnie said she was waiting for a friend.
At nine-fifty, the door opened.
Trevor Gaudette came in first, in a sport coat, carrying a folder. Behind him, very slowly, with a cane, came Elmer.
He was thinner than she remembered. His cardigan hung on him. But his eyes were the same, sharp and blue under bushy white eyebrows.
He saw Winnie in the waiting room. He did not say anything.
He did not have to. He was carrying a folded copy of the Ashby Valley Courier special edition under his arm, and the crossword was finished, in pencil, every square.
The lawyer was a careful woman in her fifties. She sat at the head of a long table with the developer's representative on one side and a stack of papers on the other. Trevor sat beside his uncle. Winnie stood by the door. The lawyer did not ask her to leave.
"Mr. Gaudette," the lawyer said. "Your nephew holds your power of attorney, but because you're present today, I'd like to confirm with you directly. Do you understand that this is the sale of your farm on Gaudette Hill Road?"
Elmer looked at her for a long moment.
"I understand it," he said.
"And do you agree to the sale?"
Trevor leaned over. "He agrees. Uncle Elmer, just say yes."
Elmer set the folded newspaper on the table in front of him. He smoothed it with his old farmer's hand. Then he looked up at the lawyer.
"No," he said. "I do not agree. I never agreed. And I would like to revoke my nephew's power of attorney. Right now. In front of you."
The room was very quiet.
Trevor said, "He's confused. He gets confused."
The lawyer looked at Elmer. "Mr. Gaudette, what's today's date?"
Elmer told her. The date, the day of the week, and the year.
"Who's the governor of Vermont?"
He told her that too.
"What's seventeen across in this puzzle?" she asked, glancing at the newspaper.
Elmer did not even look down.
"Silo," he said. "Clue was 'Tall barn neighbor.' Four letters. Too easy. She always did go easy on the farm words."
The lawyer closed her folder.
"This closing is canceled," she said.
Trevor Gaudette left for Connecticut that weekend. The power of attorney was revoked on Monday, in front of the same lawyer, in Winnie's presence, with a new one naming Elmer's neighbor's son, a dairy farmer he had known since the boy was born.
Elmer got his phone back. And his truck keys. And his Wednesday pie at the diner on Main Street.
The next Monday, a brown envelope arrived at the Courier office, addressed in Elmer's own shaky handwriting.
Inside was the week's crossword. And a note.
Colin, she gets co-credit from now on. Make room on the byline. E.G.
The puzzle had circles in it.
Colin called Winnie and read them to her over the phone.
THANK YOU WINNIE. PIE WEDNESDAY.