Dale called on Thursday.
I was in the garden behind my rental, planting peas along the back fence with dirt up to my wrists and a straw hat pushed back on my head. I let the phone ring three times before I picked up.
“Annie.” His voice was thick and furious. “What the hell is going on?”
“Hello, Dale.”
“I just got off the phone with Reinhardt. He’s pulled out. He says there’s a problem with the access. He says you own a strip.”
“I do.”
“What strip?”
“The north fence line. As surveyed.” I pressed a pea into the soil. “It’s in Dad’s will. You laughed.”
Silence. I could hear him breathing hard. Far behind him, the television was playing a game show.
“You’re telling me,” Dale said very slowly, “that you own the road.”
“I own the gate. And the culverts. And the lane, up to the fork.”
“And the well?”
“And the well.”
“The tile?”
“The main line. Yes.”
Another long silence.
“That’s insane. He can’t do that. I’ll sue.”
“You can try.”
“I’ll call Haskins.”
“He drafted it.”
“I’ll get my own lawyer. A real one. From Omaha.”
“Please do.”
“Dale.” I set down the trowel and sat back on my heels in the cool dirt. “Can I ask you something?”
“What?”
“When did you last walk the north fence?”
He didn’t answer. A robin hopped across the garden, cocked its head, and pulled a worm from the soil.
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“I’m just asking.”
“I don’t know. Years.”
“Do you know where the main tile runs? How deep? Who laid it? Do you know why Dad put the well on the north side instead of by the barn?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about the farm,” I said gently.
The line went quiet. I heard him swallow.
“I don’t know,” Dale said. His voice had changed. It had gone small and flat. “Dad never showed me.”
“He tried. In 1983, when you were standing in the yard with your bag packed, he asked you to stay one more week so he could show you the tile. You said you had a bus to catch.”
A sharp, quick breath.
“I was eighteen.”
“I know. I’m not telling you this to make you feel bad. I’m telling you because I think there’s something nobody ever told you.”
“What?”
“That he wanted you to stay.”
The silence went on so long I checked to see if the call had dropped.
“Dale?”
“I’m here.” A short, cracked laugh. “No, I’m not all right, Annie. I’m standing in Dad’s kitchen next to a flat-screen TV, and I just found out I can’t sell my own farm, and my sister owns the road, and I’m sixty-one years old and I don’t even know where my own well is.”
“I can show you.”
“What?”
“Come out Saturday. I’ll walk you along it.”
“Why would you do that?”
I thought about a pencil letter and a bucket of orange flags.
“Because Dad asked me to hold it for you,” I said. “Until you were ready.”
“Ready for what?”
“To ask.”
I heard him breathe. Then I heard my loud, easy, handsome brother say, in a voice I hadn’t heard since I was twelve:
“Annie. Will you show me where the tile runs?”
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