rimmed plate across the oilcloth table, setting it down beside my coffee mug.
“A cane gets you across the gym floor, Brenda, but hard work keeps you standing.”
I looked out at the driveway where the gravel showed dark and wet against the white grass.
“He was scared of that lawyer’s paper,” I said.
“Fear makes a man foolish with money,” Dad said. “It does not make him a stranger unless you let him walk away.”
“Kaylee is still quiet this morning.”
“She has sixty years of living ahead of her,” Dad said. “She knows what is real and what is printed on county parchment.”
He picked up his stoneware mug and leaned his weight against the edge of the iron sink.
“He offered to hand over his seed shed key before he walked to the barn,” Dad said.
I set my coffee mug down on the yellow oilcloth.
