That one hurt in the best possible way.
It had been a long time since either of them said love in plain language. They usually dressed it up as checking in, asking about weather, mailing birthday gifts late.
“You coming out?” he asked before he could stop himself.
He heard her breathe in.
Then out.
“I don’t know if I can,” she said. “Not fast.”
Because Ellen had died in that house.
Because the last month Brooke spent there had been full of morphine schedules and casseroles from church women and saying goodbye to a mother who had once seemed impossible to lose.
“Yeah,” Hank said. “I know.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You don’t owe me sorry.”
But after they hung up, the house felt smaller, and older, and more full of ghosts.
The inspectors stayed until nearly dark.
When they finally rolled out, temporary fencing had gone up around the east shed and ditch edge. Yellow notices were taped to the barn door and fuel tank cabinet. Stakes marked the road shoulder where the washout had deepened.
Hank took his flashlight and walked the fields.
It was not smart to be out there when he was bone-tired and heartsick.
But smart had little to do with it.
He needed to put his boots on his dirt while it was still his.
Corn rustled dry and heavy around him.
The moon came in and out behind fast-moving clouds.
He stopped near the old sycamore by the irrigation channel, the one where he and Ellen had carved their initials the summer before Brooke was born.
The bark had stretched and healed and swallowed most of the letters, but Hank knew where to touch.
He laid his fingers against the rough trunk.
“I’m trying,” he whispered.
He had said versions of that sentence to Ellen many times before she died.
I’m trying.
I’m trying to keep the numbers straight.
I’m trying to be brave in front of Brooke.
I’m trying not to let you see me scared.
Now he said it to the tree because grief makes strange churches out of ordinary places.
“I’m trying to hold it.”
The wind moved through the corn.
No answer came.
Still, the field kept listening.
The second day was worse because reality had settled in.
The first night there is still shock.
By the second morning, the facts have unpacked and set their shoes by the door.
More trucks came.
More clipboards.
A temporary office trailer appeared near the road.
Neighbors started bringing food in that half-helpful, half-funeral way communities do when they do not know whether to congratulate you for surviving or grieve what comes next.
Cora Ellis brought a casserole.
Dale Carter brought coffee and swore for five straight minutes about agencies, permits, and city people who thought corn came from freezer bags.
Hank appreciated both.
Neither changed anything.
