The Sign in My Son’s Front Yard

Pam nodded slowly. She said it was not unusual in a small town, family getting the first right on a house.

She would write an exclusion into the listing agreement so that if they bought it, she would not take a commission off them. She would just help with the paperwork.

“Give them until the middle of October,” she said. “That’s a month. Enough time to talk to the bank. Then if they don’t want it, we go.”

I signed the listing agreement right there. Then I went home and sat down at the kitchen table and wrote the letter, by hand, on the good stationery with the bluebirds on it that my mother left me.

I wrote it four times before I got it right. The first one was angry. The second one was sad. The third one was too long. The fourth one said only what was true.

Dear Kyle and Jessa. Dad and I can no longer afford to own the house on Elm Street on our own. We have listed it with Pam Hartley.

Before anyone else can buy it, you two have the first chance, at exactly what we paid, $148,000, until October 15. We love you. Mom.

I put both their names on the envelope. I put a stamp on it and drove it to the post office that night so I could not change my mind in the morning.

When Doug got home from the elevator a little after nine, gray with bean dust, I made him a plate and sat across from him and told him everything.

The twelve months. The plates. The laugh. Pam. The letter.

He did not say anything for a long time.

He ate his supper slowly, the way he does, and when he was done he took his glasses off and rubbed the bridge of his nose with two fingers.

“Twelve months,” he said finally. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because you’d have gone over there,” I said.

“You’re right. I would have.” He folded his napkin and set it on his plate. “I’d have asked our son a simple question. That’s what I’d have done. That’s not the worst thing, Sheila.”

I told him I knew it was not the worst thing.

I told him I was tired, that I had been carrying it alone for a year, and that I did not know anything anymore except that the money was running out of the wrong end.

“You sure about this?” he asked me.

“No,” I said. “But I’m tired, Doug.”

He looked at me across the table for a while.

Then he reached over and put his big rough hand over mine, the one that still has the scar across the knuckles from a grain auger in 1991.

“Then I’m with you,” he said. “Whatever you decide. But when Kyle gets home, I’m talking to him. Man to man. I’m not going to let this sit any longer.”

I told him that was fair. It was more than fair.

The letter went out on a Thursday. I heard nothing on Friday. I heard nothing on Saturday.

On Sunday, Jessa and the kids were not in church, which happened sometimes, and I did not read anything into it. Or I tried not to.

I drove past the house on Monday after work, the way I always did, to see that the porch light was working and the garbage cans had made it back up the driveway.

The van was in the garage. The kitchen light was on. Nobody came to the window.