The upstairs worked.
I didn’t know if it would. But it did.
Dale put Brody on hog chores after school. Ten dollars a day.
Our barns are shower-in, shower-out. So every afternoon, Brody went through the shower, put on barn clothes, and walked the alleys with Dale. Checking waterers. Checking feeders. Pulling out any pig that looked sick. Then he showered out again and came in for supper smelling like Dial soap. And hog anyway.
The first week, Brody barely said a word.
By the third week, he was telling us at supper which pen had a pig that wouldn’t come up to the feeder. And what Dale thought was wrong with it.
“He’s a good hand,” Dale told me one night in bed. “Better than I was at twelve.”
From Dale, that’s a parade.
Hannah taught Kenzie to braid. They practiced on each other every night after supper at the kitchen table, with a jar of hair ties between them.
By April, Kenzie could do a French braid on herself without a mirror.
By May, she was doing mine every morning before I left for the route.
Cole and Pickles both survived. Cole found the barn cats and named every single one of them after a different kind of pie. Pecan. Cherry. Rhubarb. Lemon Meringue.
The kitchen got loud. There were boots everywhere. The water heater ran out every morning. I bought milk two gallons at a time, and it still wasn’t enough.
Some nights, I wanted to lock myself in my pickup and just sit there.
But other nights, at the end of supper, I’d look down that crowded table at seven people and a fishbowl.
And I’d think about Great-Grandpa Kirchner building this house in 1912 with four bedrooms. Because he expected to fill them.
Jeff insisted on paying. We argued about it for a week.
Finally I told him: four hundred dollars a month for groceries and propane. Not one penny more. And he could put the rest away.
He put the rest away. Every paycheck.
He works agronomy at the co-op. That spring, during planting, he ran the sprayer fourteen hours a day. He’d come home with his eyes red from the dust and go straight upstairs to read to Cole.
Mom came out every Wednesday after that. She brought a pan of something every single time. A hotdish. A coffee cake. Bars.
She didn’t mention the house. I didn’t either.
She helped Kenzie with her spelling words. She showed Hannah how to make pie crust with lard, the way Grandma Kirchner did.
One Wednesday in May, I came home from the route and found her standing all alone in the little room upstairs. The closet door was open. Her hand was resting flat against the door frame.
Right on JEFF 5 1988.
I didn’t go in.
I went back downstairs and put the coffee on.
Specialty: Quiet Comebacks & Personal Justice
David Reynolds focuses on stories where underestimated individuals regain control of their lives. His writing centers on measured decisions rather than dramatic outbursts — emphasizing preparation, patience, and the long game. His characters don’t shout; they act.