That Friday she opened Evelyn's old blue ledger and found another note between the pages. It was written on a torn envelope and dated the previous December. "Clara may be the only one stubborn enough to give the drowned place another honest trial," Evelyn had written. "Do not make her stay, but do not let Ben convince her that the only useful future is somewhere else." Clara read the lines standing in the pantry, the smell of the old paper mingling with dried lavender on the shelf. For the first time since the funeral, she laughed out loud through her tears.
Her grandmother had not expected her to become a farmer. She had expected her to choose for herself. That difference mattered on the days when Clara was tempted to stay only because she felt guilty about leaving. There would be more of those days before summer ended. On that Friday, though, the note gave her enough steadiness to go to work at the dime store, return after dark, and find a bank envelope waiting under the kitchen door.
Henderson had reviewed the inventory she submitted. The bank would accept her initial payment if she made it by the last Friday in May and presented a credible plan for the remaining arrears, but approval of any longer extension would depend on the property valuation. Clara counted the cash in her envelope and discovered she had less than half what she needed for the first payment. The repaired wagon had not yet sold. The field remained a stand of apparently dead branches. She sat down and made two columns in the ledger, one called MONEY I CAN FIND and the other called MONEY I AM ONLY HOPING FOR.
She put nothing from the willows in the first column. Then she closed the book, extinguished the lamp, and went to bed with the rain tapping the window and the date in May coming toward her. She had no idea that the first visible sign of life in the flooded field would appear at the very moment the men most certain of her failure returned to see it.
The first Saturday in May began with the kind of sunshine that made the previous weeks of rain feel like a story told about another county. Water still stood in the ruts beside the lane, but the yard was bright and the blue porch steps had dried enough for Clara to sit on them with a cup of coffee. She had been awake since five, counting her money for a third time and trying not to imagine the bank's reply to the shortfall. The wagon was due to be collected by a buyer on Monday, assuming the man's truck was repaired in time. Until then she had forty-seven dollars less than she needed, and the only thing she could think to sell was a sewing machine Evelyn had used for twenty years.
She did not want to sell it. The machine was a heavy black Singer with gold flowers along the frame, and the little scratches in its wooden case were as familiar to her as the worn corner of the kitchen table. Evelyn had taught her to sew a straight