“Forty dollars,” I said again, standing in his shed.
“For the afternoon. Have it back by dark.”
There were a number of things a person could say at a time like that.
It’s Jim’s.
Jim’s is mine.
You took it out of my yard the week I buried him, and I said thank you.
I had every single one of those sentences lined up behind my teeth.
But I looked at Dale’s hand resting on the beam of that splitter. And I looked at his face.
And I understood something.
If I said those things, he’d say something back. And then I’d be a widow standing in a shed in October, arguing about a machine while the daylight burned away. With my son watching the whole thing through a windshield.
And I still wouldn’t have my wood in.
I understood something else, too.
If my husband’s brother was going to charge me rent on my dead husband’s splitter, I wanted it written down. In his own hand. With his own name under it.
“All right,” I said. “Thank you, Dale.”
I took my wallet out of my back pocket. I took out two twenty-dollar bills. I handed them to him.
He took them.
He folded them once and put them in his shirt pocket. And he looked more surprised than I’d seen him look since we were all young.
“I’d like a receipt,” I said.
“A receipt.”
“I keep track of things now. I have to.”
He laughed.
He went over to his workbench and tore a sheet off the little parts-store pad he writes his repair tickets on. He found a pen that worked on the third try. And he wrote it out standing up.
He was still grinning when he handed it to me.
I read it right there in the shed.
Rec’d of Becky Thorson, $40, rent on log splitter, one afternoon. Dale Thorson.
And the date.
“Good enough?” he said.
“That’s just right,” I said.
I folded it and put it in the chest pocket of my flannel shirt. And I buttoned the pocket.
He helped me hook it up. I’ll say that for him.
He dropped the tongue on the trailer ball. He ran the safety chains. He told me to keep it under forty-five on the road because those little tires heat up.
Then he stood in his yard with my forty dollars in his shirt pocket and watched me drive his brother’s splitter half a mile home.
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.