Feed prices climbed. Two vegetable harvests failed under alternating drought and hard rain, and the buyers who once paid more for carefully raised birds began demanding the same low prices they paid enormous industrial hatcheries. Kora sold the second pickup, most of the tractor attachments, and the tool chest Aaron had assembled during his apprenticeship. She kept one thing of his that had no market value: a small brass tape measure engraved with his initials, which stayed in the kitchen drawer beside her grocery lists.
The bank manager, Fletcher Wynn, had been polite through all of it. He was polite when she asked for a restructuring, polite when he explained that the bank's lending committee saw no credible way for her to restore cash flow, and polite when he told her the preliminary auction preparations were not meant to be personal. Kora had never accused him of making them personal. But there were evenings when she looked at the bank letter and wished someone involved in taking her home could at least sound as if he understood what a home was.
Caleb called from his technical program in Springfield the night the letter arrived. He had grown tall and narrow-shouldered and had inherited Aaron's habit of speaking with his hands when he was excited about an engine. The program had admitted him early through a vocational partnership, and he was studying diesel systems alongside students several years older. His tuition was mostly covered, but transportation, tools, and housing added up in ways Kora never mentioned when he called.
"How's the farm?" he asked. She heard a workshop door slam in the background and the sound of other students laughing.
"Still here," she said. "The hens are complaining about breakfast. I suppose that's a good sign."
"I can come home this weekend. I could look at the generator again."
"You have that practical assessment on Monday. Stay where you are."
There was a pause. "Mom, you always say that when something's wrong."
Kora watched the bank letter curl where her coffee cup had dampened the paper. "I know you're old enough to hear the truth," she said. "But I don't have a useful answer yet, Caleb. Let me find one before I ask you to worry with me."
"You don't have to find all the answers alone," he replied.
She closed her eyes because he sounded so much like Aaron that she had to concentrate on breathing. "I know," she said, though the truth was she had been living as if she did not.
The following morning, she drove to Cedar Hollow for feed. Her truck's heater worked only when the engine was already warm, and the windshield had a crack stretching from the lower passenger corner toward the center. She parked outside Miller Feed and Supply and counted the money in her wallet before going in. Inside, two men from a neighboring commercial poultry operation were discussing rising land values and the number of small farms likely to fail before spring.