For three years, I paid $2,100 every month toward Daddy’s $7,400 nursing home bill from my retirement while my older sister, Sherry, collected rent from his 200 acres. She told me his money was gone, and I believed her. Then I discovered a tax document showing the farm had earned $26,000 in rent the previous year. Not one dollar had reached Daddy’s bank account.

On Sunday, I drove him to his land. At 84, his legs were weak, but his mind was sharp. We found Bobby Whitt, the farmer who had rented the land for 22 years. Daddy asked where he sent the rent. Bobby explained that he paid Sherry half in March and half in November, just as she had instructed. Daddy sat silently, his hand resting on the fence post he had built with his own father decades earlier. Then he looked at Bobby and asked, “Did you ever hear me say I wanted my rent sent to Sherry?