Chapter 10: Barn Hours

The bank officer capped his pen and shook his head at Lyle Kenyon.

"I can't call a note on a date the county record disputes, Mr. Kenyon."

"The record is wrong," Lyle said.

"Then a judge can tell me so." The officer slid the assignment back to me. "The call is held. The hearing is June first."

He looked at me over his glasses.

"Until the judge rules, the note stands as written. That's one hundred eighty thousand dollars, due the same day."

I heard the number and kept my face still.

Lyle looked at Dessa and held out his hand, palm up.

"Get in the truck."

"No, sir," Dessa said.

She walked down the bank steps and climbed into Hank's truck without looking back.

Lyle watched her go, and then he looked at me.

"You'll be selling me that creek by June," he said. "I'm a patient man."

He drove off with his typed paper still folded in his shirt.

Hank put Dessa in the bunk room that afternoon and told her to keep her phone charged and her mouth shut around the barn.

"Everything he ever said to me is on this phone," Dessa told him. "Voicemails. Texts. I never deleted one."

Hank only nodded and handed her a pillow.

Wayne was sitting on the porch steps when I got home.

His keys were in his hand. Hank had given them back, and he had not used them.

He stood up when I came across the yard.

"I burned that note because I couldn't stand your mother's name on a lie," he said. "I should have shown it to you first."

"Yes," I said.

"I'm sorry."

"I know." I stopped one step below him. "Four a.m.?"

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