“The bank was on me,” Randy said. “That’s true. Kyle Hoffman wanted the books cleaned up before he’d renew the line. But that’s not the real reason.”
He stared down at his plate.
“The reason is, I wanted Luke to have a place to come home to,” he said. “I wanted it settled before planting so he’d stay. And I told myself the check was the kind thing. That you’d be glad to be done with it. That a widow wouldn’t want to be farming with her husband’s brothers anyway.”
He looked down at his big hands on the tablecloth.
“That was a lie I told myself,” he said. “Because it made it easier. It was the wrong day. And it was the wrong way. Lori told me so, and I didn’t listen.”
He stopped. Lori put her hand on his arm.
“Then I watched you lift those bags,” Randy said. “That first day. And I stood out there at the edge of the field with Luke, and I thought, that’s Jeff’s wife. Out there by herself. And I’m standing here watching. And I couldn’t think of one single thing to say for myself.”
I sat there with my hands folded in my lap.
“I’m sorry,” Randy said. “If you want the house back, it’s yours. Luke and I already talked about it. He’ll find something in town.”
Across the table, Luke nodded.
I looked at them. The whole table full of them.
These were the people I’d spent my whole grown-up life with. These were the people who came to the hospital the night Abby was born. Who sat with me in the emergency room the night Jeff broke his wrist falling off a grain bin. Who stood around his grave with me seven weeks earlier.
“I don’t want the house back,” I said.
Randy looked up.
“I have a house,” I said. “It’s across the road, and it’s got eighty acres with it. And I’m going to finish planting it tomorrow.”
Randy nodded slowly.
“But I’d like to come to Sunday dinner,” I said. “And I’d like Abby to keep riding with Luke, if he’ll have her. And when that eighty needs harvesting this fall, I’d like to rent your combine. At a fair rate. Instead of hiring somebody from Superior.”
“You’ll use it free,” Randy said.
“I’ll pay what it’s worth,” I said. “Jeff would have. You know he would have.”
And for the first time since March, Randy laughed.
“He would have argued with me about the rate for an hour,” he said. “Then he’d have paid it and bought me supper.”
That’s when Abby, who hadn’t said one word, reached up and took off her dad’s green seed cap.
She set it down on the tablecloth beside her plate.
Randy looked at that cap.
He went very still.
Then he reached over and touched the brim with one finger. Gently. The way you’d touch something in a museum.
“I gave him that,” he said. And his voice broke right in half. “The year he started planting on his own. I bought it at the seed meeting in Hastings. He was sixteen. He wore it every spring for thirty years.”
“He still had it on the hook,” Abby said. “Mom almost forgot it. But Aunt Lori remembered.”
Randy picked up his napkin and pressed it against his face.
Nobody said anything for a long time.
Lori got up and went to the stove and stood there with her back to all of us.
Luke reached over and put his hand on his dad’s shoulder. The same way the man behind him put a hand on his shoulder at the funeral.
Then Randy took the napkin down from his face. He cleared his throat.
“Well,” he said. “The roast is getting cold.”
And we ate.
After dinner, Luke said he had something for Abby. He took her down the hallway to the pantry.
When they came back, he was carrying a long, narrow piece of painted wood. About six feet of door trim, white, with the old nail holes still in the ends.
It was the inside of the pantry door frame.
Every birthday since she could stand up, Jeff had stood Abby against that door frame. He’d put a book flat on top of her head and marked her height with a carpenter’s pencil. And the date.
There were twelve marks on that piece of wood.
The very last one, in Jeff’s blocky handwriting, said: “Abby, 12, last Nov.”
“I pried it off this morning,” Luke said. “Real careful. I’ll put a new piece up for me. You should have this one.”
Abby held it in both arms.
She ran her finger up the marks, one at a time. All the way from the bottom to the top. Age one. Age two. Age five, with a little drawing of a star next to it. Age twelve.
Then she set it gently against the wall.
She walked over to Luke and hugged him around the middle. Hard.
He stood there with his arms out for a second. Like he didn’t know what to do with them. Then he put them around her.
I looked over at Randy. He was watching his son with an expression I’d never seen on his face before. I think he was proud, and ashamed, and grateful. All at once. And didn’t know which one to feel first.
