The Row With His Name On It

Jen

Jen drove out at three. Kurt must have texted her. She came up the lane in their old Equinox with Katie and Sam in the back, and she got out and walked straight to me with her face already crumpling.

“Nicole, I’m so sorry,” she said. “I knew about the job. I didn’t know about the rest. I thought you’d said yes. He told me you’d said yes.”

“I know,” I said. I believed her. Jen has never been able to lie. Her neck goes red.

She hugged me hard. Then she stood back and looked at the coat and started crying all over again.

“Does your family have a tree yet?” I asked them.

Katie shook her head. “Dad said maybe we’d get one later. When things got better.”

I looked at Kurt. He looked at the ground.

“Well,” I said. “There’s a row out past the windbreak with your dad’s name on it. Your Uncle Erik planted it for him. I think you two had better go pick one.”

“How much?” Sam asked. He is seven. He was already worried about money. That nearly finished me.

“Nothing,” I said. “That row is family. Family doesn’t pay in that row.”

The Tree

They went out together. Kurt and Jen, Katie and Sam, Hannah and Ben. I stayed at the table because there were still customers, and because I thought they should have it without me.

They were gone almost an hour. I could hear them out there, faintly, through the trees. Arguing about which one. Laughing. At one point I heard Kurt laugh, a real laugh, the first one I had heard out of him in months.

When they came back they had a ten-foot Fraser on two sleds lashed together. Katie and Sam were riding on top of it. Ben and Kurt were pulling. Hannah was behind with the saw, walking like a lumberjack.

Ben ran it through the shaker. Kurt ran it through the baler himself, slow and careful, and lifted it into the back of his Silverado and tied it down with more twine than it needed.

When it was done, Sam came over to my table. He had a dollar bill in his mitten. A single, crumpled one.

“For the tree,” he said. “Even if it’s free. So it’s not stealing.”

I looked at Kurt over Sam’s head. Kurt looked like someone had hit him.

I took the dollar. I smoothed it flat and put it in the cash box, in its own slot, under the tray.

“Thank you, Sam,” I said. “That’s a fair price.”