The fourteen thousand five hundred dollar bank check stub I had found under his brass tractor paperweight in the seed shed office felt far away. A man keeping a cold secret did not sit on the floor playing checkers with an eight-year-old boy on a Thursday afternoon.
“Is Kaylee almost ready to load her bag?” Travis called toward the hallway stairs.
“She is setting her shoes out,” I said from the doorway.
“Tell her not to hurry,” Travis said, looking up at me with clear blue eyes. “We have plenty of time before six.”
He crowned Mason’s red piece with a double turn and slapped the wooden board with his hand, making Mason giggle aloud.
At quarter after four, Kaylee came down the wooden stairs wearing her maroon warm-up jacket with the school logo sewn over the chest pocket.
Travis stood up off the carpet, brushed a thread off his
