She left that night with the children asleep in the back seat and Raymond sat alone on the trailer step long after her taillights had vanished. He opened his notebook to the first page where he had written the four names and their first responses nine months ago. He turned through the pages. Marcus’s column. Four entries. All about money or property. Diane’s column. Three entries. All brief. All distant. Kevin’s column. Two entries. Both painful. Nora’s column filled thirty-seven pages.
He closed the notebook and held it in his lap. The crickets were loud in the grass. The stars were out. Somewhere in the farmhouse Eileen’s journal sat in a drawer. Her handwriting waiting for him to finish what she had started. Raymond picked up his phone and dialed Frank Myers’s home number. Frank answered on the fourth ring. His voice groggy. “It’s time,” Raymond said. “Set up the family meeting. I’m ending this.”
Nora made the calls on Monday. She told Raymond about each one that evening on the phone. Marcus had asked immediately if the meeting was about the property. Nora told him she didn’t know, only that their father wanted all four of them there on Saturday morning. Marcus said he would try. Nora said trying wasn’t the same as coming. He said he would be there.
Diane hesitated. She had a conference call scheduled. Could they do Sunday instead? Nora said Saturday, ten o’clock. Diane said she would move the call. Kevin picked up but didn’t speak for several seconds. Nora could hear the parts store in the background. The beep of a barcode scanner. A coworker calling a stock number. “What’s this about?” he asked. “He wants to see us. All of us.” Kevin was quiet again. Then, “Fine. I’ll be there.”
Saturday came with clear skies and a warm wind from the south. June in Iowa. The fields impossibly green. The air thick with the smell of growing things. Raymond woke early and dressed in clean clothes for the first time in weeks. He shaved at the trailer’s small mirror and combed his hair and put on boots he had polished the night before.
Harold arrived at eight. He had spent the previous three days airing out the farmhouse, running the furnace to clear the stale air, wiping down surfaces, mopping the kitchen floor. The house was not spotless but it was warm and it smelled like lemon cleaner and coffee. Harold set out mugs on the counter and a pot on the stove. On the dining room table arranged neatly were the farm’s financial statements, the grain elevator contracts, the portfolio summary from Frank Myers’s office. Nine months of hidden prosperity laid out in black and white.
“You sure about this?” Harold asked. “That’s honest at least.” Nora arrived first. She always arrived first. Her station wagon pulled into the farmhouse driveway at 9:30 and Lily and Sam tumbled out and ran toward Harold who scooped Sam up with one arm and ruffled Lily’s hair. Ben climbed out of the passenger side, stretched and nodded to Raymond on the porch.