Chapter 22: Dean Comes Home

Hattie's POV

I found the ledger on the porch swing at six, with the key on top and a scrap of feed receipt tucked under the cover.

I had read nine pages standing up when the second truck came up the drive.

It was Jesse's, and behind it was another with North Dakota plates.

I put the ledger down on the swing.

My hands had stopped working.

Jesse got out first and stood by the fender with his hat off.

The man who climbed out of the other truck was tall, and too thin, and wore a canvas jacket I didn't know.

He walked up the yard slowly.

He stopped at the bottom step.

He was twenty-seven years old, and he had a gray hair at his temple.

"Hat," Dean said.

I came down the steps and hit him.

It was an open hand across the face, and it rang off the barn.

He didn't lift his arm.

"That's for Pa's funeral," I said. "That's for the cattle money. That's for every Christmas."

"I know."

"That's for sending a letter instead of a phone call."

"I know."

My voice broke on the next word.

I put my arms around him instead and pulled him against me, and he made a sound I had not heard since he was seven years old.

He held on to me hard, and I felt him shaking.

Jesse stood back by the truck and looked at the ground.

Dean told it at my kitchen table with both hands around a cup of coffee he didn't drink.

"It was the winter after I left," he said. "I was in a bar in Minot. I drank all night. Then I got in the truck."

His throat moved.

"There was a man on his way home from a night shift. I hit him head on. He's in a chair now, Hat. He'll be in it for the rest of his life."

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