The Bills by the Sugar Bowl<\/p>\n
My stepmother told me at her kitchen table in April.<\/p>\n
The bills were stacked by the sugar bowl. A neat pile, squared at the corners, the way Connie squared everything. On top was a pink envelope from Sanford Health in Fargo with the words PAST DUE stamped in red.<\/p>\n
She poured me a cup of coffee I didn\u2019t ask for. She sat down across from me. She folded her hands on top of the pile.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe doesn\u2019t remember saying it, Haley,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Dad was in the next room with the ball game on. The Twins were losing to Cleveland. I could hear the announcer\u2019s voice, low and steady, and the click of Dad\u2019s recliner when he shifted his weight.<\/p>\n
He couldn\u2019t shift much anymore.<\/p>\n
The stroke took most of his right side in January. It happened on a Tuesday morning while he was shoveling the front walk. Connie found him face down in the snow by the mailbox. The doctors at Sanford said if she\u2019d found him ten minutes later, there wouldn\u2019t have been anything left to save.<\/p>\n
It took his right arm. It took his right leg. It took the right side of his smile, so now when he grinned, only half his face came along.<\/p>\n
It took a lot of his words, too.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe doesn\u2019t remember,\u201d I repeated.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, honey.\u201d Connie\u2019s voice was gentle. Careful. \u201cI asked him. Twice. He looked at me like I was speaking French.\u201d<\/p>\n
I stared down at my coffee.<\/p>\n
The night Jake asked for my hand, back in December, Dad had walked me out to my car. It was ten below and the stars were so sharp they looked like broken glass. He hugged me right there in the driveway, in his old Carhartt jacket that smelled like diesel and Old Spice.<\/p>\n
\u201cFive thousand, kiddo,\u201d he said into my hair. \u201cFor the wedding. I put it away for you. Don\u2019t you tell Connie I\u2019m getting soft.\u201d<\/p>\n
Six weeks later, he was face down in the snow.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m his power of attorney now,\u201d Connie said. \u201cYou know that. The lawyer set it up back when we got married, just in case. And now it\u2019s not just in case anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n
She smoothed the top bill with one finger.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have to guard every dollar,\u201d she said. \u201cEvery single one. You understand that, right?\u201d<\/p>\n
I looked at her. Connie Brekke Lindahl. Sixty-one years old. Gray bob, cut every five weeks at the Clip Joint on Main Street. Reading glasses on a beaded chain. She worked the front desk at the Harlow County Extension Office for twenty years and knew the name of every farmer\u2019s wife in three counties.<\/p>\n
She\u2019d been married to my father for eleven years. I\u2019d never once seen her cry.<\/p>\n
\u201cI understand,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
I could have pushed back. I thought about it. I thought about saying, he told me in the driveway, I\u2019m not making it up. I thought about walking into the next room and asking him myself, right in front of her.<\/p>\n
But Connie had the legal say over Dad\u2019s money. Every account. Every check. Every decision. That\u2019s what the paper meant.<\/p>\n
And I was not going to start my marriage fighting over five thousand dollars at my father\u2019s bedside. Not with him sitting in that recliner, unable to get the words out, watching us fight over him like a couple of crows over roadkill.<\/p>\n
\u201cOkay,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
Connie let out a breath. Her shoulders came down a little. \u201cThank you, honey.\u201d<\/p>\n
I stood up and put my coffee cup in the sink. I went into the living room and kissed Dad on top of his head. His hair was thinner than I remembered. His good hand came up and patted my arm.<\/p>\n
\u201cLove you, Dad,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
He made a sound. It wasn\u2019t a word. But I knew what it meant.<\/p>\n
I cried the whole drive home.<\/p>\n
Forty minutes on Highway 18, past fields still white with old snow, past the grain elevator in Hatton with its lights blinking red on top. I cried so hard I had to pull over once by a section line road and just sit there with the engine running.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t really about the money. I want to be honest about that. Five thousand dollars was a lot to us. But it wasn\u2019t the money.<\/p>\n
It was that Dad promised. And now he couldn\u2019t remember promising. And Connie got to decide what he remembered.<\/p>\n
Chapter Two: The Driveway<\/p>\n
My mother died when I was twelve.<\/p>\n
Breast cancer. She found the lump in March and was gone by Thanksgiving. Her name was Linda. She had blonde hair like mine and she sang Patsy Cline songs while she did dishes and she made the best kolaches in Harlow County. She won a blue ribbon at the county fair three years running.<\/p>\n
After the funeral, it was just Dad and me.<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t know how to braid hair. He didn\u2019t know how to buy a bra for a twelve-year-old. He burned every single pot roast for two years straight. But he got up every morning at five and made me oatmeal before he drove to the co-op, and he came to every one of my volleyball games, and he never once missed a parent-teacher conference.<\/p>\n
Gene Lindahl. Six foot two, hands like baseball mitts. Thirty-four years driving grain trucks and fixing farm equipment for the Harlow Farmers Co-op. The kind of man who\u2019d stop on a gravel road to help a stranger change a tire in a blizzard and then refuse to take their twenty dollars.<\/p>\n
He met Connie when I was seventeen. At a pancake breakfast at the Lutheran church.<\/p>\n
I hated her. I hated her the way only a seventeen-year-old girl can hate a woman who sits in her dead mother\u2019s chair.<\/p>\n
She was neat where Mom was messy. Quiet where Mom was loud. She put coasters on everything. She reorganized Mom\u2019s spice cabinet in alphabetical order. She never once tried to make kolaches.<\/p>\n
They got married two years later, when I was at nursing school in Grand Forks. A small ceremony at the courthouse. I went. I wore black. Dad didn\u2019t say anything about it, but I saw his face.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not proud of that.<\/p>\n
Over the years, it got better. Sort of. Connie and I learned how to be polite. We talked about the weather and the price of soybeans and whether the Bison would make the playoffs. She sent me a birthday card every year with a twenty-dollar bill inside, signed Love, Dad and Connie, in her neat schoolteacher handwriting.<\/p>\n
But we were never close. There was always a fence between us. A low one. But a fence.<\/p>\n
I met Jake Hendrickson at a street dance in Mayville when I was twenty-six.<\/p>\n
He was standing by the beer tent in a clean pair of Wranglers and a Bison hoodie, talking to a farmer about wheat prices. He had sunburned forearms and a laugh you could hear over the band. When he asked me to dance, he stepped on my foot twice and apologized both times like he\u2019d run over my dog.<\/p>\n
He worked at the grain elevator in Hatton. Twelve-hour shifts during harvest, unloading trucks, running the dryers, checking moisture levels. He was the most steady person I\u2019d ever met. Nothing rattled him. Not blizzards, not broken augers, not my father.<\/p>\n
The first time he came to dinner, Dad shook his hand and squeezed hard. Jake squeezed back just as hard and didn\u2019t flinch.<\/p>\n
After he left, Dad looked at me across the table.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019ll do,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
From Gene Lindahl, that was practically a sonnet.<\/p>\n
Jake asked Dad for my hand in December. Two weeks before Christmas. I didn\u2019t know he was going to do it.<\/p>\n
He drove out to the house alone on a Saturday afternoon. Connie told me later that he and Dad sat in the garage for an hour and a half, in the cold, with the space heater going and two cans of Grain Belt between them.<\/p>\n
That night, Jake proposed to me on the frozen Goose River with a ring he\u2019d been paying off at the jewelry store in Grand Forks since August. I said yes before he even finished the question.<\/p>\n
The next night, we drove out to Dad\u2019s to tell him officially. Connie made a pot roast. It wasn\u2019t burned.<\/p>\n
When we were leaving, Dad walked me out to my car. Just me. He told Jake to go warm up the truck.<\/p>\n
He hugged me in the driveway, under the yard light, with the stars so sharp they hurt.<\/p>\n
\u201cFive thousand, kiddo,\u201d he said. \u201cI put it away for you. In case you ever found one worth marrying.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDad. You don\u2019t have to.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI know I don\u2019t have to.\u201d He pulled back and looked at me. His eyes were wet. \u201cYour mom would\u2019ve wanted to do it. So I\u2019m doing it for both of us.\u201d<\/p>\n
That was the last real conversation I ever had with my father.<\/p>\n
Six weeks later, he couldn\u2019t say my name.<\/p>\n
Chapter Three: The Legal Pad<\/p>\n
Jake didn\u2019t say one word against Connie.<\/p>\n
When I got home that night in April, still crying, he was at the kitchen table in our rented farmhouse outside Hatton. He took one look at my face and got up and held me for a long time without saying anything.<\/p>\n
Then I told him. All of it. The bills. Power of attorney. He doesn\u2019t remember.<\/p>\n
He listened. When I was done, he didn\u2019t say she was lying. He didn\u2019t say I should fight her. He didn\u2019t say anything mean about Connie at all.<\/p>\n
He got out a yellow legal pad instead.<\/p>\n
\u201cOkay,\u201d he said. He clicked his pen. \u201cLet\u2019s figure out what we actually need.\u201d<\/p>\n
We sat at the kitchen table that night until almost one in the morning. Jake wrote everything down in his blocky farm-boy handwriting.<\/p>\n
Church: two hundred dollars. Pastor Halvorsen wouldn\u2019t take more than that, and he\u2019d already said so.<\/p>\n
Reception: the Harlow Community Center. Three hundred to rent the hall for the day. The Lutheran church women would do the food for twelve dollars a plate if we bought the meat.<\/p>\n
Meat: Jake\u2019s cousin Travis raised beef. He\u2019d sell us a half at cost. Twenty-four hundred, butchered and wrapped.<\/p>\n
DJ: Jake\u2019s buddy Cody, who had speakers and a laptop and played every wedding in three counties. Four hundred.<\/p>\n
Flowers. Dress. Suit rental. Cake. Invitations. Photographer. Beer.<\/p>\n
Jake added it up twice. Then a third time.<\/p>\n
\u201cAbout nine thousand,\u201d he said, \u201cif we keep it plain.\u201d<\/p>\n
I put my face in my hands.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t have nine thousand dollars,\u201d I said. \u201cWe have twenty-two hundred in savings. And that\u2019s supposed to be for a down payment someday.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI know.\u201d He tapped the pen against the pad. \u201cSo we work.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWork how?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHarvest starts in August. I\u2019ll pick up every Saturday and Sunday shift they\u2019ve got. That\u2019s double time on Sundays. And you said the clinic needs someone for weekend emergencies.\u201d<\/p>\n
He looked at me across the table. Steady as a fence post.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can do this, Hal,\u201d he said. \u201cWithout anybody\u2019s five thousand dollars.\u201d<\/p>\n
So we did.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m a vet tech at the Prairie Animal Clinic in Mayville. Mostly cows and horses and farm dogs, with a few barn cats and the occasional pet goat. That summer, I picked up every extra shift they had. Weekend emergencies. Night calls. A calving in a thunderstorm at three in the morning, where I stood in a mud-filled barn up to my shins holding a flashlight while Dr. Bergstrom pulled a calf out backward.<\/p>\n
Jake worked at the elevator from six in the morning until six at night, five days a week. Then he worked Saturday and Sunday too. By the end of August, he was so tired he fell asleep at the dinner table with a fork in his hand.<\/p>\n
We stopped going out to eat. We stopped buying anything we didn\u2019t need. I cut Jake\u2019s hair in the kitchen with clippers from Walmart. He fixed the hole in my winter boots with Gorilla Glue.<\/p>\n
I bought my wedding dress in June. A plain white dress off the rack at a bridal outlet in Fargo. No lace. No beading. Just white satin, with thin straps and a little bit of a train.<\/p>\n
It cost two hundred and eighty dollars.<\/p>\n
The lady at the store kept trying to show me the ones with sparkles. \u201cThis one\u2019s only twelve hundred,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s on clearance.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis one\u2019s perfect,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
I stood in front of the three-way mirror in that dressing room and looked at myself for a long time. I thought about my mom. She\u2019d have cried. She\u2019d have made a fuss about the hem.<\/p>\n
I wished so hard she was there that my chest ached.<\/p>\n
Jake\u2019s aunts said they\u2019d make the bars.<\/p>\n
In North Dakota, you don\u2019t have a wedding without bars. Lemon bars. Scotcheroos. Seven-layer bars. Special K bars. Monster cookie bars. Jake\u2019s Aunt Darla and Aunt Bev and Aunt Rhonda made twenty-two pans between them, which they stored in Aunt Darla\u2019s chest freezer and guarded like gold bullion.<\/p>\n
\u201cNobody touches the Scotcheroos until after the cake,\u201d Aunt Darla told me. \u201cI don\u2019t care if it\u2019s the governor.\u201d<\/p>\n
My friend Mandy from nursing school said she\u2019d do my hair. Jake\u2019s cousin Shelby, who had a fancy camera and was taking a photography class at the community college, said she\u2019d take pictures for a hundred dollars and a plate of food.<\/p>\n
Little by little, the numbers on Jake\u2019s legal pad started going down.<\/p>\n
Chapter Four: Tap Twice<\/p>\n
In May, I drove out to Dad\u2019s house to ask Connie the other thing.<\/p>\n
It was a Sunday afternoon. The lilacs were blooming along the north side of the house, purple and heavy. Mom had planted those lilacs the year I was born. Connie never cut them back.<\/p>\n
Connie was in the kitchen making a hotdish. Dad was in his wheelchair at the kitchen table, working on a therapy worksheet with his left hand. Big letters. Tracing shapes. Like a kindergartner.<\/p>\n
He looked up when I came in. Half his face smiled.<\/p>\n
\u201cHal,\u201d he said. It came out slow and slurred, like he was talking with a mouthful of marbles. But it was my name.<\/p>\n
I put my arms around his neck from behind and kissed the top of his head.<\/p>\n
\u201cHi, Dad.\u201d<\/p>\n
I sat down at the table. Connie put the hotdish in the oven and came and sat across from me.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to ask you something,\u201d I said. \u201cBoth of you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Connie folded her hands. That careful way she had. Like she was waiting for bad news.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want Dad to give me away,\u201d I said. \u201cAt the wedding. I want him to walk me down the aisle.\u201d<\/p>\n
Connie looked at Dad\u2019s wheelchair. She looked at it for a long time.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, honey,\u201d she said softly.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know he can\u2019t walk,\u201d I said. \u201cThat\u2019s okay. I\u2019ll push him.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHaley,\u201d Connie said carefully. \u201cHe gets tired. Real tired. By two in the afternoon, he can barely keep his eyes open. And he hasn\u2019t been out in public much. Not since January. Not in front of a crowd.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not a crowd. It\u2019s family.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a hundred and fifty people,\u201d Connie said. \u201cAll staring at him. In a wheelchair. With his face.\u201d She lowered her voice, even though Dad was sitting right there. \u201cHe gets embarrassed. When he tries to talk and it doesn\u2019t come. He gets so frustrated. I don\u2019t know if he wants everybody staring at him like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThen I\u2019ll push him,\u201d I said again. \u201cHe doesn\u2019t have to say anything. He just has to be there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Connie didn\u2019t say yes.<\/p>\n
She didn\u2019t say no either. She just sat there with her hands folded, looking at Dad, with an expression on her face I couldn\u2019t read.<\/p>\n
Then I heard a sound.<\/p>\n
Tap. Tap.<\/p>\n
Dad\u2019s good hand. His left hand. Tapping twice on the kitchen table.<\/p>\n
I looked at him. He was looking right at me. Not at Connie. At me. His eyes were very clear.<\/p>\n
That was the system his speech therapist had taught us in February, when he couldn\u2019t say anything at all. One tap meant no. Two taps meant yes.<\/p>\n
Tap. Tap.<\/p>\n
\u201cDad,\u201d I whispered.<\/p>\n
He tapped twice again. Harder this time. So hard the salt shaker jumped.<\/p>\n
Connie let out a long breath. She looked down at her hands. When she looked back up, her eyes were shiny, but no tears came. They never did with Connie.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell,\u201d she said. \u201cI guess that settles it.\u201d<\/p>\n
I got up and hugged my dad so hard his wheelchair rolled backward an inch. He made a sound that might have been a laugh.<\/p>\n
Behind me, I heard Connie get up and go to the oven and open it and close it again. Like she needed something to do with her hands.<\/p>\n
Every Tuesday that summer, Dad had speech therapy in Fargo. At the Sanford rehab clinic on Broadway.<\/p>\n
Sixty miles each way. Connie drove him.<\/p>\n
She\u2019d leave the house at seven in the morning. His appointment was at nine. Then he had occupational therapy at ten-thirty and physical therapy at one. They\u2019d get home around four, and Dad would be so exhausted he\u2019d sleep in his recliner until supper.<\/p>\n
Every single Tuesday. June. July. August. September.<\/p>\n
I never asked what they worked on.<\/p>\n
I should have. I know that now. But I was busy, and tired, and angry, and I told myself it was none of my business. Connie had the paper. Connie made the decisions. Connie drove him to Fargo.<\/p>\n
I just showed up on Sundays and kissed him on the head and left.<\/p>\n
Chapter Five: The Van<\/p>\n
In late June, I drove past Dad\u2019s house on the way home from a call at the Svoboda farm and saw something new in the driveway.<\/p>\n
A van. A silver Dodge Grand Caravan, maybe five or six years old. Clean and shiny, with a wheelchair ramp folded up against the side door.<\/p>\n
I pulled in. Connie was in the front yard watering the petunias.<\/p>\n
\u201cNew van?\u201d I said, getting out.<\/p>\n
\u201cUsed,\u201d she said. \u201cFrom a dealer in Grand Forks. It\u2019s got a ramp. He can roll right in. No more lifting him into the Buick.\u201d She turned off the hose. \u201cMy back was about to give out.\u201d<\/p>\n
I looked at the van. I looked at the price sticker still in the back window. $26,900.<\/p>\n
Twenty-six thousand, nine hundred dollars.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s a nice van,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a necessary van,\u201d Connie said.<\/p>\n
I got back in my car and drove home. I didn\u2019t say anything else. But my hands were shaking on the steering wheel.<\/p>\n
My Aunt Marlene called me that night.<\/p>\n
Marlene was Dad\u2019s older sister. She was seventy, lived in Devils Lake, and had never liked Connie. Not once, not for one minute in eleven years.<\/p>\n
\u201cI heard Connie bought a new car,\u201d she said. No hello. Marlene never said hello.<\/p>\n
\u201cA van, Aunt Marlene. With a wheelchair ramp.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWith whose money?\u201d<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t answer.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m just saying,\u201d Marlene said. \u201cGene had money put away. He told me so himself. At Easter last year. He said he\u2019d been saving for years. Ever since Linda died. He said he had a little nest egg for you.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cConnie says he doesn\u2019t remember.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cConnie says.\u201d Marlene snorted. \u201cConnie says a lot of things. Connie\u2019s got power of attorney over every dime Gene ever earned, and now she\u2019s driving around in a brand-new van while you\u2019re working double shifts to pay for your own wedding. You think about that, Haley.\u201d<\/p>\n
I did think about it.<\/p>\n
I thought about it all night. I lay in bed next to Jake, who was snoring from his twelve-hour shift, and I stared at the ceiling and thought about that twenty-six-thousand-dollar van.<\/p>\n
The next morning, I called a lawyer.<\/p>\n
His name was Neil Hagen. He had an office above the bank in Mayville, and he did wills and land contracts and the occasional divorce. He\u2019d known my dad for thirty years.<\/p>\n
\u201cHaley,\u201d he said, when I told him who I was. \u201cHow\u2019s your dad doing?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNot great.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sorry to hear that. He\u2019s a good man.\u201d<\/p>\n
I told him about the power of attorney. About the van. About the five thousand dollars. About Aunt Marlene.<\/p>\n
He listened. When I was done, he was quiet for a while.<\/p>\n
\u201cHere\u2019s what I can tell you,\u201d Neil said. \u201cUnder North Dakota law, an agent under a power of attorney has a fiduciary duty. That means Connie has to act in your father\u2019s best interest. Not her own. She has to keep records. She has to keep his money separate. And she can\u2019t make gifts from his money unless the power of attorney specifically says she can.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat does that mean? Gifts?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt means,\u201d Neil said carefully, \u201cthat even if your father remembered promising you five thousand dollars, and even if he wanted to give it to you, Connie might not be able to legally hand it over. Depending on what the document says. And depending on his situation.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat situation?\u201d<\/p>\n
He paused.<\/p>\n
\u201cIs your dad likely to need long-term care, Haley? A nursing home? Assisted living?\u201d<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t answer. I hadn\u2019t let myself think about that.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf he is,\u201d Neil said gently, \u201cand if he ends up needing Medicaid to pay for it, there\u2019s a five-year lookback. Any gifts he makes in the five years before he applies, Medicaid counts against him. Gives him a penalty period. Months where he\u2019s not covered at all.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo five thousand dollars to me\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cCould cost your dad a couple of months of nursing home care,\u201d Neil said. \u201cAt about nine thousand a month.\u201d<\/p>\n
I sat in my car in the clinic parking lot with the phone pressed against my ear.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you think Connie\u2019s misusing his money,\u201d Neil said, \u201cyou have the right to ask for an accounting. You\u2019re his daughter. That\u2019s an interested person. I can send her a letter. She\u2019d have to show where every dollar went.\u201d<\/p>\n
I thought about it.<\/p>\n
I thought about Connie folding her hands on top of the bills. I have to guard every dollar.<\/p>\n
I thought about Dad tapping twice on the table.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet me think about it,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cTake your time,\u201d Neil said. \u201cAnd Haley? For what it\u2019s worth, I\u2019ve known Connie a long time too. She\u2019s not the type.\u201d He paused. \u201cBut I\u2019ve been wrong before.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chapter Six: The Pawn Shop<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t send the letter.<\/p>\n
I almost did. Twice. I had it drafted in my email. Dear Connie, As Gene\u2019s daughter, I\u2019m requesting a full accounting of his finances under the power of attorney. Both times, I closed the laptop without hitting send.<\/p>\n
Jake didn\u2019t push me either way.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat do you want to happen?\u201d he asked me one night in July. We were sitting on the porch steps of the farmhouse, watching heat lightning flicker over the wheat fields.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want Dad to get better,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah,\u201d Jake said. He put his arm around me. \u201cMe too.\u201d<\/p>\n
In August, I saw something I couldn\u2019t explain.<\/p>\n
I was in Fargo on a Tuesday, picking up a special order of vaccine for the clinic. I stopped at a gas station on 13th Avenue, and while I was pumping, I looked across the street.<\/p>\n
There was a pawn shop. Fargo Gold and Loan. Bars on the windows. A neon sign that said WE BUY GOLD.<\/p>\n
And coming out the door, clutching her purse against her chest, was Connie.<\/p>\n
She didn\u2019t see me. She walked quickly to the silver van, parked at the end of the lot. She climbed in. She sat behind the steering wheel without starting it.<\/p>\n
I watched her through the windshield.<\/p>\n
She put both hands over her face. Her shoulders started shaking.<\/p>\n
Connie Lindahl. Who never cried. Who didn\u2019t cry when Dad had the stroke, who didn\u2019t cry in the ICU, who didn\u2019t cry when the neurologist said he\u2019d probably never walk again.<\/p>\n
She sat in a pawn shop parking lot on 13th Avenue in Fargo and cried so hard the van rocked.<\/p>\n
I stood there with the gas nozzle in my hand until it clicked off.<\/p>\n
Then she wiped her face, started the van, and drove away. Toward Broadway. Toward the rehab clinic, where Dad was in speech therapy.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t follow her.<\/p>\n
I finished pumping gas. I paid. I drove back to Mayville with the vaccine in a cooler in the back seat. And I didn\u2019t tell anybody what I\u2019d seen. Not even Jake.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t know what it meant. I only knew that Connie had gone into a pawn shop with something and come out with nothing.<\/p>\n
The next Sunday, I drove out to Dad\u2019s for dinner.<\/p>\n
Connie made chicken and dumplings. Dad was in his wheelchair at the table, and he was having a good day. He said \u201cHal\u201d when I walked in. He said \u201cJake\u201d when Jake followed me. He even said \u201cgood\u201d when Connie asked him how the dumplings were.<\/p>\n
Connie set down the basket of rolls. I watched her hands.<\/p>\n
Her left hand.<\/p>\n
For eleven years, Connie had worn a gold wedding band and a small diamond engagement ring, stacked together on her fourth finger. Not a big diamond. Maybe a quarter of a carat. Dad bought it at Ellingson\u2019s Jewelers in Grand Forks, and he was so proud of it he showed it to everybody at the co-op.<\/p>\n
Her finger was bare.<\/p>\n
There was a pale stripe of skin where the rings used to be.<\/p>\n
I looked up at her face. She saw me looking. She saw exactly what I was looking at.<\/p>\n
For one second, something moved across her face. Fear. Or shame. Or both.<\/p>\n
Then she smoothed her napkin over her lap.<\/p>\n
\u201cPass the butter, Haley,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
I passed the butter.<\/p>\n
Chapter Seven: The Rehearsal<\/p>\n
The wedding was the third Saturday in September.<\/p>\n
The rehearsal was Friday evening at St. John\u2019s Lutheran, the little white country church six miles outside Harlow where my mom and dad got married in 1987. Where I was baptized. Where we had Mom\u2019s funeral.<\/p>\n
It sat at the end of a gravel road with nothing around it but sunflower fields and a cemetery behind a low iron fence. Plain white siding. A bell tower with a real bell. Plain glass windows, no stained glass, so the daylight came through clear and white and fell across the wooden pews in long stripes.<\/p>\n
Mom was buried in that cemetery, under an elm tree in the back row. I went out and visited her before the rehearsal started. I brought her a bunch of black-eyed Susans from the ditch along the road.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m getting married tomorrow, Mom,\u201d I told her. \u201cDad\u2019s going to give me away.\u201d<\/p>\n
The elm tree rustled. That was all.<\/p>\n
The rehearsal didn\u2019t go well.<\/p>\n
Pastor Halvorsen walked us through everything. Who stands where. When to come in. When to sit down. Jake practiced saying \u201cI do\u201d so loud that Aunt Darla laughed.<\/p>\n
Then we got to the part where Dad gave me away.<\/p>\n
I pushed his wheelchair down the aisle. The church floor was old wood, and it creaked. One of the wheels squeaked every three feet. By the time we got to the front, Dad\u2019s face was gray and his good hand was gripping the armrest so hard his knuckles were white.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd then I\u2019ll ask,\u201d Pastor Halvorsen said gently, \u201cwho gives this woman to be married. And Gene, you can just nod. Or raise your hand. Whatever\u2019s comfortable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dad looked at him. His mouth worked. Nothing came out.<\/p>\n
He looked at Connie, sitting in the front pew.<\/p>\n
Connie shook her head. Just a tiny shake. Almost nothing.<\/p>\n
Dad\u2019s shoulders slumped.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s tired,\u201d Connie said, standing up. \u201cIt\u2019s late. He\u2019s been up since six. He needs to go home.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re almost done,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s done, Haley.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe can nod. That\u2019s all he has to do. Pastor said he can just nod.\u201d<\/p>\n
Connie came down the aisle and put her hand on the back of Dad\u2019s wheelchair. Right next to mine.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s done,\u201d she said again, very quietly. \u201cPlease.\u201d<\/p>\n
I let her take him.<\/p>\n
She wheeled him out the side door to the van. I watched through the plain glass window as she lowered the ramp, rolled him up, buckled him in. I watched her lean in and say something to him. I watched him tap twice on the armrest.<\/p>\n
Then she drove away.<\/p>\n
I stood in the church with my wedding party and my soon-to-be husband and my mother\u2019s cemetery out the back window. And I started crying.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe doesn\u2019t want him to do it,\u201d I said to Jake in the parking lot. \u201cShe never wanted him to. She\u2019s embarrassed of him.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHal\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShe sold her rings, Jake. I saw her coming out of a pawn shop in Fargo. And she bought a twenty-seven-thousand-dollar van. And she won\u2019t give me the money Dad promised me. And now she won\u2019t even let him give me away.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jake was quiet for a long time. He leaned against his truck and looked out at the sunflowers, black against the sunset.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou ever think,\u201d he said slowly, \u201cthat maybe there\u2019s something she\u2019s not telling you because she can\u2019t?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLike what?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d He looked at me. \u201cBut I watched her face tonight. When she shook her head at him. That wasn\u2019t embarrassment, Hal.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThen what was it?\u201d<\/p>\n
He thought about it.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt looked like she was scared he\u2019d try,\u201d he said, \u201cand it wouldn\u2019t come out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chapter Eight: Who Gives This Woman<\/p>\n
The next morning, I woke up at five-thirty without an alarm. Just like Dad.<\/p>\n
Mandy came over at eight and did my hair in a low bun at the back of my neck, with little pieces of baby\u2019s breath tucked in. She pinned my veil on top. It was my mom\u2019s veil. Dad had kept it in a cedar chest in the basement for fifteen years.<\/p>\n
I put on my two-hundred-and-eighty-dollar dress. I looked in the mirror.<\/p>\n
I looked like her. More than I ever had.<\/p>\n
We got to the church at one-thirty. The wedding was at two.<\/p>\n
The parking lot was full of pickups. Farm trucks, mostly. A few SUVs. A tractor, actually. Old Mr. Svoboda drove his John Deere over from his place a mile and a half down the road, because he said his wife wouldn\u2019t let him drink and drive the truck.<\/p>\n
A hundred and fifty people filled the wooden pews. Jake\u2019s family on one side. Mine on the other. People from the co-op, from the vet clinic, from the grain elevator. Pastor Halvorsen\u2019s wife. My old volleyball coach. Aunt Marlene in the third row, in a purple hat, with her arms crossed.<\/p>\n
In the front pew sat Connie.<\/p>\n
She wore a sage green dress. Her gray bob was done just so. Her hands were folded in her lap. Her left hand was still bare.<\/p>\n
Dad was waiting for me in the little room off the vestibule where the choir kept their robes.<\/p>\n
Someone had dressed him in his dark suit. His only suit. The one he wore to Mom\u2019s funeral and to his own wedding to Connie. It hung looser on him now. They\u2019d pinned a boutonniere on the lapel. A single yellow rose with a sprig of baby\u2019s breath.<\/p>\n
He was sitting in his wheelchair, very straight. He\u2019d shaved. His hair was combed.<\/p>\n
When I came through the door in my dress and my mother\u2019s veil, his face crumpled. The good half and the bad half both.<\/p>\n
\u201cHal,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHi, Daddy.\u201d<\/p>\n
His good hand came up. I took it. It was shaking.<\/p>\n
\u201cPretty,\u201d he said. It took him a long time. But he said it.<\/p>\n
I heard the organ start.<\/p>\n
Mrs. Engstrom, who\u2019d played the organ at St. John\u2019s for forty-one years, started the processional. Pachelbel\u2019s Canon. The same song Mom walked down the aisle to in 1987.<\/p>\n
Through the doorway, I heard a hundred and fifty people stand up. The wooden pews creaked. Somebody\u2019s baby fussed and was hushed.<\/p>\n
I took the handles of Dad\u2019s wheelchair with one hand.<\/p>\n
\u201cReady?\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
His good hand reached across and found my other hand, where it rested on the armrest. He gripped it.<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t say anything. He just held on.<\/p>\n
We went through the doorway into the church.<\/p>\n
The aisle looked a mile long. The daylight was coming through those plain windows in long white stripes across the floor. The squeaky wheel squeaked. The old floorboards creaked. And Dad held my hand.<\/p>\n
Not once did he let go. The whole way up.<\/p>\n
He held it so tight it hurt. I could feel every bone in his fingers. I could feel how hard he was working just to sit up straight, just to keep his head up, just to be there.<\/p>\n
I could hear people sniffling behind me. On both sides. Big strong farmers in their good shirts, wiping their eyes.<\/p>\n
Somebody\u2019s grandpa whispered, loud enough for half the church to hear, \u201cLook at Gene.\u201d<\/p>\n
We stopped at the front.<\/p>\n
Jake was standing there in his rented gray suit, with his hands clasped in front of him. He was crying. Big tears rolling right down his face, and he wasn\u2019t even trying to hide it.<\/p>\n
I set the brakes on Dad\u2019s wheelchair. Click. Click.<\/p>\n
His hand was shaking so hard in mine now. Trembling all the way up his arm.<\/p>\n
Pastor Halvorsen looked down at us. He smiled. He asked it the way he asks it every Saturday. The way he\u2019d asked it at a thousand weddings.<\/p>\n
\u201cWho gives this woman to be married?\u201d<\/p>\n
The church went quiet.<\/p>\n
So quiet I could hear the wind in the sunflowers outside. So quiet I could hear the old clock in the back ticking. So quiet I could hear Dad breathing.<\/p>\n
I waited for him to nod. That\u2019s all he had to do. Pastor said so. Just a nod.<\/p>\n
In the front pew, Connie leaned forward. Her hands came apart in her lap. She was gripping her knees.<\/p>\n
Dad\u2019s mouth was working at the first word. I could see it. His jaw moving. His lips trying to make a shape.<\/p>\n
I squeezed his fingers.<\/p>\n
He took a breath so deep I felt it run up my arm. All the way from his chest to his shoulder to his hand to mine.<\/p>\n
And then my father spoke.<\/p>\n
Chapter Nine: Her Mother and I<\/p>\n
\u201cHer\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
The word came out slow. Thick. But clear. Everyone in that church heard it.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2026mother\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
He stopped. His jaw was working. His face was red with effort. A tear ran down the bad side of his face, the side he couldn\u2019t feel.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2026and I.\u201d<\/p>\n
The church was absolutely silent. Nobody breathed.<\/p>\n
Dad took another breath. His hand crushed mine.<\/p>\n
\u201cDo.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her mother and I do.<\/p>\n
Those were the words my father said at his own wedding, at his own church, in 1987. No. That\u2019s not right. Those were the words Mom\u2019s father said. Grandpa Olaf, giving Mom away to my dad, in this same church, on this same floor.<\/p>\n
Her mother and I do.<\/p>\n
The words fathers say. The words that mean: we raised her together. We both gave her to you. Even if one of us isn\u2019t here.<\/p>\n
Especially if one of us isn\u2019t here.<\/p>\n
I made a sound. I don\u2019t know what it was. My hand went to my mouth.<\/p>\n
Behind me, a hundred and fifty people broke at the same time. I heard Aunt Darla sob out loud. I heard old Mr. Svoboda blow his nose like a trumpet. I heard Aunt Marlene, in her purple hat, say \u201cOh, Gene,\u201d in a voice I\u2019d never heard her use.<\/p>\n
Jake was crying so hard his shoulders shook.<\/p>\n
Pastor Halvorsen had to take off his glasses and wipe them on his robe before he could go on.<\/p>\n
And Dad. Dad sat there in his wheelchair with his chin up, breathing hard, still holding my hand. Half his face was smiling.<\/p>\n
Then I looked at the front pew.<\/p>\n
Connie.<\/p>\n
She was sitting with both hands pressed flat over her mouth. Her eyes were closed. Tears were streaming down her face. Running down her cheeks and off her chin and onto her sage green dress, leaving dark spots.<\/p>\n
Connie Lindahl, who never cried, was crying so hard her whole body shook.<\/p>\n
And her lips were moving. Silently. Behind her hands. I could see them through her fingers.<\/p>\n
Her mother and I do.<\/p>\n
She was saying it with him. Word for word. Like she\u2019d heard it a thousand times. Like she\u2019d practiced it.<\/p>\n
That was when I understood.<\/p>\n
Every Tuesday. Every single Tuesday for five months. Sixty miles each way. Seven in the morning until four in the afternoon. Speech therapy at nine.<\/p>\n
I never asked what they worked on.<\/p>\n
They worked on this.<\/p>\n
Four words. Her mother and I do. My father sat in a little room at the Sanford rehab clinic on Broadway, every Tuesday, with a speech therapist and a mirror and my stepmother, practicing four words. Over and over. Week after week. Month after month.<\/p>\n
So he could give me away.<\/p>\n
And Connie. Connie drove him there. And sat with him. And helped him practice. Helped him practice saying my mother\u2019s name. Not hers. My mother\u2019s. Linda\u2019s. The first wife. The one whose spice cabinet she alphabetized. The one whose lilacs she never cut back.<\/p>\n
She helped my father practice giving me away for both of them. Him and Mom.<\/p>\n
And she never said a word.<\/p>\n
At the rehearsal, when she shook her head at him. When she took him home early.<\/p>\n
She wasn\u2019t embarrassed of him. Jake was right.<\/p>\n
She was scared. Scared he\u2019d use the words up. Scared that if he tried on Friday and failed, in front of everybody, he\u2019d lose his nerve. Scared he\u2019d only have it in him once.<\/p>\n
She was saving them. For this. For me.<\/p>\n
Pastor Halvorsen put his glasses back on. He cleared his throat twice.<\/p>\n
\u201cThank you, Gene,\u201d he said softly.<\/p>\n
Dad nodded once. Then he did something nobody expected. He let go of my hand. Slowly. Finger by finger.<\/p>\n
He reached over with his good hand and took Jake\u2019s hand. Jake knelt down beside the wheelchair so Dad could reach him. Dad held Jake\u2019s hand for a moment. Then he put my hand in Jake\u2019s. He folded our fingers together with his own.<\/p>\n
He patted them twice.<\/p>\n
Tap. Tap.<\/p>\n
Yes.<\/p>\n
Chapter Ten: The Ring<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t remember much of the rest of the ceremony. I know I said \u201cI do.\u201d I know Jake said it even louder than he did at the rehearsal. I know Shelby took two hundred pictures and that, in almost every single one, I\u2019m crying.<\/p>\n
I remember Pastor Halvorsen said, \u201cYou may kiss the bride,\u201d and Jake kissed me so hard my veil fell off. I remember the bell ringing in the tower when we came out the doors. I remember old Mr. Svoboda honking the horn on his John Deere.<\/p>\n
What I remember most is what happened afterward.<\/p>\n
The reception was at the Harlow Community Center. Tables with white paper tablecloths and mason jars full of sunflowers. Travis\u2019s beef, roasted all morning by the Lutheran church women. Mashed potatoes. Green bean hotdish. Twenty-two pans of bars, guarded by Aunt Darla with a serving spatula like a sword.<\/p>\n
Dad sat at the head table next to me. He was exhausted. He fell asleep in his wheelchair twice during dinner, and both times somebody gently put a napkin under his chin.<\/p>\n
But he was smiling. Even asleep.<\/p>\n
Around eight o\u2019clock, when the dancing started, I went looking for Connie.<\/p>\n
I found her outside on the back steps of the community center. Alone. Sitting on the concrete in her sage green dress with her shoes off, looking out at the grain elevator in the distance, its lights blinking red against the dark.<\/p>\n
I sat down next to her. My dress pooled on the step.<\/p>\n
Neither of us said anything for a while. Inside, Cody the DJ was playing \u201cFriends in Low Places,\u201d and a hundred people were shouting along.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery Tuesday,\u201d I said finally.<\/p>\n
Connie nodded. She didn\u2019t look at me.<\/p>\n
\u201cSince June,\u201d she said. \u201cHe asked me. In May. The day you came and asked if he\u2019d give you away. After you left, he tapped on the table. And then he pointed at the calendar. At the therapy appointments. And then he pointed at your picture on the fridge.\u201d<\/p>\n
She took a breath.<\/p>\n
\u201cTook me ten minutes to figure out what he meant,\u201d she said. \u201cThen he said \u2018Linda.\u2019 Just like that. Clear as anything. First time he\u2019d said her name since January.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd you helped him.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHis speech therapist, Brianna, said it was too ambitious. Four words. She said we should aim for one. Maybe \u2018I do.\u2019\u201d Connie laughed a little through her tears. \u201cGene wouldn\u2019t have it. He tapped on the table so hard he knocked over her pencil cup. Four words or nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy didn\u2019t you tell me?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause he might not have been able to do it,\u201d she said simply. \u201cAnd I didn\u2019t want you walking down that aisle expecting something that didn\u2019t come. I couldn\u2019t stand the thought of it. Him trying and failing in front of you. In front of everybody. It would have broken him, Haley. And I think it would have broken you.\u201d<\/p>\n
She turned and looked at me for the first time.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I said nothing,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd I let you think I didn\u2019t want him there. I figured you\u2019d hate me either way. Better you hate me for that than for getting your hopes up.\u201d<\/p>\n
I looked down at her left hand. Resting on her knee. Bare.<\/p>\n
\u201cI saw you,\u201d I said quietly. \u201cIn Fargo. In August. Coming out of the pawn shop on 13th Avenue.\u201d<\/p>\n
Connie went very still.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou sold your rings,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
She didn\u2019t answer for a long time. When she finally did, her voice was very small.<\/p>\n
\u201cSpeech therapy is a hundred and eighty dollars a session,\u201d she said. \u201cMedicare covers some of it. But after a certain number of visits in a year, it stops. There\u2019s a cap. They make you fill out forms to justify more, and you wait, and sometimes they say no.\u201d She shook her head. \u201cWe hit it in July. I applied for an exception. They denied it in August.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo you paid for it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cTen more sessions,\u201d she said. \u201cTo get to the wedding. Eighteen hundred dollars.\u201d She looked down at her bare hand. \u201cFargo Gold and Loan gave me two thousand for the set.\u201d<\/p>\n
I couldn\u2019t speak. I just sat there on the back steps of the community center in my wedding dress, staring at her hand.<\/p>\n
\u201cHaley,\u201d Connie said. \u201cThere\u2019s something else. About the money. The five thousand.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou don\u2019t have to\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, I do.\u201d She took a breath. \u201cHe remembered.\u201d<\/p>\n
My heart stopped.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe always remembered,\u201d she said. \u201cHe\u2019s remembered every day since January. He tries to tell me. He points at your picture. He says \u2018Hal\u2019 and then he says \u2018money\u2019 and then he gets so angry he cries. Because he can\u2019t make the rest of the words come.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut you said\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI know what I said.\u201d Her voice broke. \u201cI lied to you, honey. At the kitchen table. I\u2019m sorry. I\u2019m so sorry.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chapter Eleven: Where the Money Went<\/p>\n
She told me everything on those back steps.<\/p>\n
The stroke happened on January 14th. Dad was in the ICU at Sanford for nine days. Then a rehab hospital for twenty-one days. Then home, with a home health nurse three times a week.<\/p>\n
Medicare covered a lot of it. But not everything. There were deductibles. Copays. The ambulance. The twenty percent of every single doctor visit and every MRI and every therapy session.<\/p>\n
And the rehab hospital. Medicare only covers the first twenty days in full. After that, there\u2019s a daily copay. Over two hundred dollars a day.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy April,\u201d Connie said, \u201cwe\u2019d paid eleven thousand dollars out of pocket. And that pile on the kitchen table, that was the next eight thousand.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe five thousand Gene put away for you,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was in a savings account at Bremer Bank. Separate from everything else. He opened it the week your mom died. He put fifty dollars in it every month for fifteen years. Never touched it once.\u201d<\/p>\n
She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s gone, Haley,\u201d she said. \u201cI had to use it. In March. For the rehab hospital bill. I didn\u2019t have any other choice. It was that or lose the house.\u201d<\/p>\n
I closed my eyes.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I went to Neil Hagen,\u201d she said. \u201cIn Mayville. To ask him if I could give you what was left of anything. Even a thousand. And he told me about the Medicaid lookback. He said if Gene ever has to go into a nursing home, and he might, honey, he might, any gift I make from his money could cost him months of care. He said I couldn\u2019t risk it. Not legally. Not as his agent.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNeil told me that too,\u201d I whispered. \u201cWhen I called him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Connie looked at me sharply. \u201cYou called Neil?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIn July.\u201d I felt my face get hot. \u201cAfter you bought the van. I thought you were spending Dad\u2019s money on yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n
She didn\u2019t get angry. She just nodded slowly, like it made sense.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe van,\u201d she said, \u201cwas mine. My money. From my 401(k), from twenty years at the Extension Office. I took it out early. Paid the penalty and the taxes. Because I couldn\u2019t lift him into the Buick anymore, Haley. I dropped him in February. In the church parking lot. He hit his head on the door frame and I had to call two men from the choir to help me get him up off the ice.\u201d<\/p>\n
She shook her head.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wasn\u2019t going to let that happen again,\u201d she said. \u201cNot ever.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd the kitchen table,\u201d I said. \u201cIn April. Why did you tell me he didn\u2019t remember? Why didn\u2019t you just tell me the truth? That the money was gone?\u201d<\/p>\n
Connie was quiet for a long time. Inside, Cody was playing \u201cAmazed,\u201d and I could hear people slow dancing, their boots shuffling on the old wood floor.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause he was in the next room,\u201d she said. \u201cListening. And he can hear everything. His mind is all there, Haley. All of it. It\u2019s just locked in.\u201d<\/p>\n
She pressed her fingers against her eyes.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I\u2019d told you the money was gone, he\u2019d have heard me. He\u2019d have heard me tell his daughter that the money he saved for fifteen years, fifty dollars at a time, the money he promised her in the driveway, got spent on his hospital bills. Because of him. Because he got sick.\u201d Her voice cracked in half. \u201cIt would have killed him. I mean it. It would have killed something in him that the stroke didn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo you said he forgot.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I said he forgot,\u201d Connie said. \u201cI\u2019d rather you think he forgot than think he failed you. He\u2019s been trying so hard, Haley. Every single day. I couldn\u2019t take that from him too.\u201d<\/p>\n
I sat there on the back steps of the Harlow Community Center in my two-hundred-and-eighty-dollar dress, with my mother\u2019s veil in my lap.<\/p>\n
I thought about the kitchen table. Connie folding her hands on top of the bills. I have to guard every dollar.<\/p>\n
I thought she meant from me.<\/p>\n
She meant for him.<\/p>\n
I reached over and took her left hand. Her bare one. I held it in both of mine.<\/p>\n
It was the first time in eleven years I\u2019d ever held my stepmother\u2019s hand.<\/p>\n
\u201cConnie,\u201d I said. \u201cI\u2019m so sorry.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFor what?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFor the courthouse. When I wore black. For the spice cabinet. For every Christmas I didn\u2019t call. For thinking you were stealing from him.\u201d My voice was shaking. \u201cYou\u2019ve been taking care of my dad. All by yourself. And I\u2019ve been sitting there every Sunday, eating your chicken and dumplings and thinking the worst of you.\u201d<\/p>\n
She squeezed my hand.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou loved your mother,\u201d Connie said simply. \u201cAnd I was in her chair. I understood that. I always understood that.\u201d<\/p>\n
She looked out at the blinking red lights on the grain elevator.<\/p>\n
\u201cI never wanted to replace her, honey,\u201d she said. \u201cI just wanted to sit next to her place. And keep it warm.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chapter Twelve: Tap Twice<\/p>\n
Jake found us out there twenty minutes later.<\/p>\n
He came out the back door holding two paper plates, one in each hand. Each plate had a Scotcheroo on it.<\/p>\n
\u201cAunt Darla says these are the last two,\u201d he said. \u201cShe says if anybody else asks, they\u2019re for the bride\u2019s family.\u201d<\/p>\n
He handed one to me. He handed the other one to Connie.<\/p>\n
Connie looked up at him. Then at the bar. Then at me.<\/p>\n
\u201cBride\u2019s family,\u201d she repeated softly.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s what she said,\u201d Jake said, and went back inside.<\/p>\n
We sat there and ate our Scotcheroos on the back steps, Connie and me. We didn\u2019t say much. We didn\u2019t need to.<\/p>\n
When we went back in, Cody was playing \u201cMy Girl.\u201d The father-daughter song. I\u2019d told him to skip it. I\u2019d told him Dad couldn\u2019t dance.<\/p>\n
But Dad was sitting at the edge of the dance floor in his wheelchair. And when he saw me come through the door, he raised his good hand. And he crooked one finger.<\/p>\n
Come here.<\/p>\n
I went out on that dance floor in front of a hundred and fifty people. I took Dad\u2019s good hand. And I held it, and I swayed back and forth in front of his wheelchair while the Temptations sang.<\/p>\n
That was our dance. Me swaying. Him holding on. His half smile. My mother\u2019s veil back on my head.<\/p>\n
Halfway through the song, Dad let go of my hand. He looked over at the edge of the dance floor, where Connie was standing alone in her sage dress.<\/p>\n
He raised his finger again. He crooked it at her.<\/p>\n
Come here.<\/p>\n
Connie shook her head. She put her hand on her chest. Me? No.<\/p>\n
Dad tapped twice on his armrest.<\/p>\n
Tap. Tap.<\/p>\n
Connie came out onto the dance floor.<\/p>\n
She stood on the other side of Dad\u2019s wheelchair. He took her hand in his. Then he reached over with that same hand, slowly, so slowly, and took mine too. And he held both of our hands together on the armrest in his one good hand.<\/p>\n
And the three of us stayed like that until the song ended.<\/p>\n
That was a year ago.<\/p>\n
Dad is still in his wheelchair. He probably always will be. But he can say about thirty words now. Brianna says it\u2019s a miracle. Dad says it\u2019s \u201cstubborn.\u201d That\u2019s one of his thirty.<\/p>\n
Jake and I bought a house in Harlow in the spring. Two bedrooms, a big yard, five minutes from Dad and Connie. We had the down payment because we didn\u2019t spend all of our savings on the wedding after all. Aunt Marlene paid for the beef. She told nobody until the bill came. \u201cGene would\u2019ve done it,\u201d she said. \u201cSo I did.\u201d<\/p>\n
Every Tuesday, I drive Dad to Fargo for therapy now. Connie does Thursdays. We switch off.<\/p>\n
Last Christmas, Connie gave me a small box.<\/p>\n
It was wrapped in plain brown paper with a red ribbon. Inside was a bank passbook from Bremer Bank. A savings account. In my name. And Dad\u2019s.<\/p>\n
It had one deposit. Fifty dollars. Made in December.<\/p>\n
And a note card, in Connie\u2019s neat schoolteacher handwriting, with an addition at the bottom in big, shaky, left-handed letters.<\/p>\n
Fifty dollars a month. Every month. Started over. Not from Gene\u2019s money. From mine. Neil Hagen says that\u2019s allowed.<\/p>\n
Under that, in letters so big and crooked they took up half the card:<\/p>\n
FOR HAL. LOVE DAD.<\/p>\n
I went over to their house that night. Christmas night. The lilacs along the north side of the house were bare sticks, buried in snow.<\/p>\n
Connie was in the kitchen making coffee. Dad was in his recliner with the Christmas lights on, half asleep.<\/p>\n
I knelt down beside his chair. I held up the passbook.<\/p>\n
\u201cDad,\u201d I said. \u201cYou didn\u2019t have to do this.\u201d<\/p>\n
He opened his eyes. He looked at the passbook. Then he looked at me.<\/p>\n
He said one of his thirty words. Slow and thick. But clear.<\/p>\n
\u201cPromised.\u201d<\/p>\n
I put my head down on the arm of his recliner and cried.<\/p>\n
He put his good hand on top of my head. It was heavy and warm and it smelled like Old Spice.<\/p>\n
Behind me, I heard Connie set two cups of coffee on the end table. I heard her sit down in her chair across the room. I heard her pick up her knitting.<\/p>\n
I looked up. She was watching us over the top of her reading glasses. Her left hand was resting on her knitting.<\/p>\n
On her fourth finger, there was a ring. A thin gold band. Plain. No diamond.<\/p>\n
\u201cGene bought it at Ellingson\u2019s,\u201d she said, when she saw me looking. \u201cIn November. He made me drive him. Wouldn\u2019t tell me why. Pointed at the case and tapped twice.\u201d<\/p>\n
She smiled. A real smile. I\u2019d never seen her smile like that before.<\/p>\n
\u201cFourteen karat,\u201d she said. \u201cSixty-nine dollars. From the money in his wallet.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dad\u2019s hand was still resting on my head.<\/p>\n
I reached up and took it. His good hand. I held it in both of mine.<\/p>\n
Then I tapped twice on the back of it.<\/p>\n
Tap. Tap.<\/p>\n
He squeezed my fingers. And he didn\u2019t let go.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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