- Luke ran my planter all that morning. I hauled seed.
- I drove the pickup and the trailer down to the end of the field whenever he signaled. He’d climb down, and I’d lift bags, and he’d lift bags. We filled those planter boxes faster than I would have believed.
- He planted straighter than I did. If I’m honest, he planted straighter than Jeff did. And Jeff would have been the very first to say so.
- Around noon, I heard a diesel engine coming down the gravel road from the east.
- I looked up.
- It was Scott. Pulling the partnership’s seed tender behind his pickup.
- The big gray one with the conveyor arm. The one Jeff bought at a dealer auction four years earlier. The one I’d written the check for, at my kitchen table, for $14,500.
- Scott turned right into my field without stopping at the house. He pulled up alongside my planter. He got out of the pickup. He swung the conveyor arm over the first planter box. And he started filling it.
- He didn’t say a word to me.
- He didn’t even look at me.
- He filled every single box on that planter. Then he got back in his pickup. He pulled the seed tender over to the end of my field, unhooked it right there and left it.
- He was walking back toward his pickup when I caught up to him.
- “Scott.”
- He stopped. He didn’t turn around right away.
- Scott was always the quiet one of the three brothers. The one who stood at the back of every room. The one who let Randy do the talking.
- “You’ll need that the rest of the week,” he finally said, still facing his pickup. “Bring it back when you’re done. Bags’ll kill you.”
- “Thank you, Scott.”
- He turned around then.
- His eyes were red.
- “I should have said something in that basement,” he said. “Randy had it all worked out, and I let him do the talking. Because I always let Randy do the talking. And I sat there. And Jeff’s not even cold yet. And I’m telling his wife to get out of his house.”
- He shook his head slowly.
- “I’ve been sick about it since March,” he said. “I’m sorry, Melissa.”
- “I know you are,” I said.
- “That’s all,” he said.
- And he got in his pickup and drove back across the road.
- With that seed tender, Luke and I planted almost forty acres that day.
- Abby rode with him the whole afternoon. When I brought them ham sandwiches at four o’clock, she was explaining to him how her dad liked to do the end rows first. And Luke was nodding, very seriously. Like she was teaching him something he didn’t already know.
- It rained on Friday.
- A slow, soft, all-day rain. The kind you pray for on fresh-planted ground. I stood at the kitchen window of that little white farmhouse and watched it come down on my forty acres. I said a prayer for every single seed.
- Saturday was too wet to run.
- I had about twenty acres left to plant. Across the road, they had their last field on the north end.
- On Saturday evening, the phone rang.
- It was Lori.
- “Sunday dinner’s at twelve-thirty,” she said. “Like always. I expect you and Abby.”
- I didn’t answer right away.
- “I’m setting your places, Melissa,” she said. “Whether you come or not, I’m setting them. So you might as well come and eat.”
- We went to church in the morning. Pastor Lindgren shook my hand at the door and held on to it longer than usual.
- Afterward, we drove across the road to the house I’d lived in for twenty years. I parked in the yard, in the same spot I’d parked a thousand times.
- It was strange walking in that back door as a guest.
- Lori had put out a fresh tablecloth. The white one with the blue stitching around the edges. The roast was resting on the stove. The whole house smelled like gravy and fresh rolls.
- Scott was there with his wife, Deb. Luke was there. And Randy was sitting at the head of the table, where he’d always sat at family dinners since his dad passed.
- There were two places set on the left side of the table.
- At one of them sat my old coffee cup.
- The white one with the chip in the handle. I’d left it behind in the cupboard the day we moved because I didn’t have room in the box.
- Randy stood up when we came in. That wasn’t like him. He stood there and waited until I sat down before he sat back down.
- We bowed our heads, and Scott said grace.
- Then Randy didn’t pick up his fork.
- “Melissa,” he said. “I need to say something before we eat. Or I won’t be able to eat.”
- The whole table went quiet.
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