Epilogue: Signed, Dad
The checks stopped.
Nobody had to say so. The first of November came and went, and Jake didn’t walk anywhere.
Gordon came by twice that November. Once to help Jake reset the gutters that had shifted on the trip. Once to bring a box of apples from somebody’s tree in town.
He knocked both times.
In eleven years, he had never knocked once.
The Sunday before Christmas, he came to our back door after church, in his good hat. He asked Jake to step out on the porch with him.
I watched through the kitchen window.
Gordon took a long white envelope from the inside pocket of his jacket and held it out.
Jake opened it and stood there very, very still.
When Jake came back inside, he set the envelope on the kitchen table in front of me without a word.
It was a cashier’s check from First National Bank in Alliance, made out to Jake and Kayla Rasmussen.
Sixty-six thousand dollars.
A note was folded around it, in Gordon’s square, careful printing.
Every dollar. I sold the bred heifers and cashed out the savings account your mother started. It was never mine to keep. I’m sorry it took a house going down the road for me to see it.
Dad.
I sat at my kitchen table and cried.
Not because of the money.
Because he’d signed it Dad. To both of us.
We paid my father back the first week of January. Every dollar he’d put into the move.
He tried not to take it.
I made him.
And until that Tuesday night, I thought I lived in my own house.
Note: This story is a work of fiction inspired by real events. Names, characters, and details have been altered. Any resemblance is coincidental. The author and publisher disclaim accuracy, liability, and responsibility for interpretations or reliance. All images are for illustration purposes only.
