Kevin walked to the trailer door and knocked even though the door was open. “Come in,” Raymond said. Kevin stepped inside and looked around. His eyes moved differently than Marcus’s had. Marcus had appraised. Kevin inventoried. He was looking for something.
“Sit down,” Raymond said. Kevin sat at the fold-down table. He picked at a scratch in the laminate with his thumbnail. “I’ve been trying to figure out how to say this.” “Just say it.” “Did you have any other accounts, anything you didn’t tell us about? Savings bonds, CDs, anything Eileen might have set aside?” “There’s nothing, Kevin.” “What about life insurance? Mom’s policy. Where did that go?” “Medical bills. Last nine months of treatment took everything the insurance didn’t cover.”
Kevin’s jaw tightened. He stared at the scratch in the table. “The shop is going under, Dad. I owe the bank eighty-four thousand dollars. Tammy took a second job at the Dollar General because I can’t make payroll. Tyler needs braces and I can’t—I was counting on—” He stopped. “You were counting on the inheritance.”
Kevin looked up and Raymond saw it. Behind the anger, behind the accusation, there was fear, raw, uncomplicated fear. Kevin was not a greedy man. He was a drowning one, and the inheritance had been the life raft he had mapped his survival around.
“I don’t know what to do,” Kevin said quietly. Raymond wanted to tell him the truth, wanted to reach across the table and say the money is there, the farm is fine, let me help you. The impulse rose in his chest and pushed against his ribs. But then he thought of Eileen’s journal. They speak to him in transactions. He swallowed the words.
“I wish I could help,” Raymond said. Kevin nodded. He stood up, pushed the chair back, and walked to the door. “I’ll figure it out. I always do.” But his voice said something different. His voice said he was not sure he would figure it out at all.
Raymond watched Kevin’s truck disappear down the road and opened his notebook. He wrote for a long time. Kevin’s name, the date, what he said, what his face looked like when he said it. Then, at the bottom: He didn’t ask how I was, but he’s afraid. Real fear. This is different from Marcus. He sat with the notebook open in his lap and felt something he had not expected to feel. Guilt.
November came. The soybeans were harvested by Harold’s crew, the money deposited silently into Frank’s trust account. The corn went to the elevator, same as every year, but Raymond’s name was nowhere on the paperwork. To anyone watching, the operation ran on borrowed time. Raymond sat in his trailer and waited.