Don’t let him take the place. But don’t let him fall, either. He’s the only brother I’ve got. If you can find it in you, give him a way back.
It’s the hardest thing I’ll ever ask you to do.
I loved you every day.
Tom
I read it twice. Then I folded it in four and held it against my chest, and I cried the way I hadn’t been able to cry since the diagnosis, deep and ugly and unembarrassed, bent over with my forehead nearly touching the sod. The meadowlark stopped. Then it started again.I did not tell Dwayne right away.
I thought about it for two weeks. I counted the money at the kitchen table, forty-one thousand, three hundred dollars, in mostly twenties and fifties, with a few hundred-dollar bills from the early years. I took it to the bank in Valentine and paid off the note on the north eighty. I put the rest in a savings account in Ben’s name and mine.
