“And then I didn’t know how,” Dale said.
His voice was getting thick.
“I’m not good at it. I had the card bill coming every month. Every month I’d think, I’ll go up there and tell her. And then I’d think about walking into that kitchen. And asking a widow for six hundred dollars. At the table where he—”
He stopped.
“I couldn’t do it.”
He looked over at the splitter.
“I took the splitter that week because I thought, well, I’ll hold onto it. And when she asks for it, I’ll say it then. And then you asked. And I had it all ready to say. And what came out of my mouth was forty dollars an afternoon.”
“Fifteen afternoons,” Mrs. Hartmann said.
She’d always been quick at arithmetic.
“Yes ma’am.”
Dale’s eyes were wet.
“Fifteen afternoons, and we’d be square. And I’d never have to say it out loud. It sounded all right in the truck.”
He looked at me.
“It didn’t sound all right when you handed me the money. And then you asked for the receipt. I thought you were just being careful. I thought it was kind of funny.”
“I know you did,” I said.
“It’s not funny on that board.”
“No. It’s not.”
I stood there in his yard and felt a whole week of being right go out of me. Like air out of a tire.
Not all of it.
A man who’s owed six hundred dollars says so. He doesn’t take a dead man’s tools out of his widow’s yard and charge her by the day. I thought that then. I still think it now.
But I also thought about Jim, sitting at the kitchen table in February. Not telling me. To save me the worry.
And his brother down the road, not telling me. Because he was too ashamed to say it.
The two of them were exactly alike.
Second row. By the radiator.
“Wait here,” I said.
“Becky, I don’t—”
“Wait here, Dale.”
Specialty: Emotional Turning Points
Rachel Monroe writes character-driven stories about betrayal, second chances, and unexpected resilience. Her work highlights the emotional side of family conflict — the silences, the misunderstandings, and the moments when someone quietly decides they’ve had enough.