The Morning I Paid My Father Back

What Tyler said

I drove home to our rented duplex on Locust Street and sat in the car for a while before I went in. Tyler’s truck was in the driveway, a 2011 Ram with a cracked tailgate and a sticker from the co-op on the back glass.

He was at the kitchen table with his boots off, eating cold chicken out of the container. He took one look at me and put the lid back on.

“What happened?”

I told him. I tried to tell it plainly, but my voice went thin in the middle and I had to stop. Tyler did not say a word until I was done.

Then he stood up and reached for his boots.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“To talk to your dad.”

“No.” I put my hand on his arm. “Please don’t.”

He looked at me for a long moment. Tyler is a big man, broad from the shoulders down, and he does not get angry often. When he does, he gets quiet. He was very quiet then.

“He called me a man who shovels corn,” Tyler said. “That’s fine. I am one. But he made you cry, Kayla. That’s not fine.”

“I know. But if you go over there, he gets to make it about you. About you being hot headed, about you not being good enough. I don’t want to hand him that.”

Tyler sat back down slowly. He set his boots under the table.

“Then what do you want to do?”

I had been thinking about it the whole drive home. I had been thinking about it, honestly, for most of my life.

“I want to pay him back,” I said. “Every dollar. Before the wedding.”

The house money

Tyler and I had eleven thousand four hundred dollars in a savings account at First State Bank. It was for a down payment on a little house on Maple Street, a two bedroom with a detached garage and a crabapple tree in the yard. It had been on the market for a month.

We had been saving for two years. Tyler worked overtime every harvest. I babysat on Friday nights and did summer camp at the church. We put away whatever was left after rent.

“That’s our house money,” Tyler said.

“I know.”

“Kayla, we don’t have to do this. He gave it to you. A gift is a gift.”

“He doesn’t think it was a gift. He thinks it was a loan with conditions.” I looked down at the table. “If I keep it, every time he looks at my wedding pictures he’ll think he bought that dress. And he’ll be right.”

Tyler rubbed his face with both hands. Then he reached over and turned the savings account statement around so we could both see it.

“Then it’s a smaller house,” he said. “Or a later one.”

I loved him so much right then I could hardly breathe.