“Starting today,” Daddy told Ronnie, “my rent goes straight into my own bank account. Not Darla’s.” Ronnie nodded, but Daddy noticed something in his expression. He asked whether Darla had requested anything else. Ronnie hesitated before admitting that last spring she had offered to sell him Daddy’s farm. She claimed Daddy had agreed because he would never farm again and quoted Ronnie a price worth barely half the property’s real value.

Daddy gripped the old corner post until his knuckles turned white. Ronnie explained that he had never agreed to buy it, only promised to think about the offer. Darla had told him she would prepare the paperwork by Christmas. Daddy said nothing during our entire drive back to the nursing home. He simply held his brown felt hat in his lap and stared through the window. The following Monday, I drove him to the attorney who had prepared his will thirty years earlier. What the attorney uncovered made everything even worse.

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