Dale’s truck was in my yard at eight o’clock the next Saturday morning.
He didn’t knock.
I heard the chainsaw start.
When I went outside with a cup of coffee, he was already down at the end of the row. Cutting the biggest rounds in half, so Cole could lift them onto the beam.
The three of us split wood until dark that day.
And the Saturday after that.
And the one after that.
We put up my whole winter’s wood. And five cords left over.
Those five cords went to the names I’d written down from the phone calls. The widower on Spring Lake. The young mother whose husband was overseas. Three more after that.
Dale and Cole didn’t say much to each other that first Saturday.
By the second Saturday, Dale was showing him how to file a chainsaw chain.
By the third Saturday, Cole was arguing with him about it.
Which, in that family, is how you can tell everything’s going to be all right.
That was a year ago.
This October, I had the splitter out of my own shed. Right where it belongs.
I went into the lean-to and went over the list on the wall fresh, in carpenter’s pencil. I did that part myself this time. Pressing hard, the way Jim always did.
Mrs. Hartmann, one cord.
Donna Peterson, one cord.
Marlene Olson, one cord.
I’d been going back and forth all week about whether I had the right to add anything to it.
The first Saturday of the month, before I’d even pulled the starter rope, a truck turned in at the end of the driveway.
Nobody had called him. Nobody had asked.
Dale got out with his own chainsaw in one hand.
And a pie in the other. In a tin. With plastic wrap pulled tight over the top.
“Mrs. Hartmann sent this,” he said. “She says she worked out who she owed it to.”
He held it out.
“She says it’s for whoever stacks.”
Cole is seventeen now. He’s taller than either one of them ever were.
He took the pie and the chainsaw out of his uncle’s hands. And he handed him a pair of work gloves.
I went back into the lean-to for the water jug.
I stood there and looked at the wall for a minute.
Then I took the carpenter’s pencil down off its nail.
And under the three names, in my own handwriting, I wrote a fourth line.
Dale brings the saw.
It isn’t as square as Jim’s printing.
But it’ll hold.
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.