The Tax Bill I Mailed My Stepson

Next Saturday

Keith came up the gravel drive at nine the next Saturday morning. Becky was in the passenger seat. The kids were not with them.

I had made coffee, and I had made pancakes, because I did not know what else to do with my hands.

Becky got out first. She came up the steps and knocked on the screen door even though it was open.

Keith stood behind her in the gravel with his hands in his pockets, the way he had stood two months before.

“Kristi,” Becky said. “Keith has something he needs to say to you. And then he has something he needs to sign.”

I opened the screen door. Deputy jumped off the porch rail and went to sniff Keith’s boots. Keith looked down at the cat, and for a second he looked about fourteen years old.

He came up the steps. He sat down at the kitchen table across from me.

He looked around at the kitchen, the counters you could touch both of, his daddy’s coffee mug on the hook. He did not touch the pancakes.

“Mom told me,” he said. He stopped. He started again. “For as long as I can remember, Mom told me you would sell it. The day Dad died, you’d sell it and keep the money, and I’d never see the lake again.”

“I know,” I said.

“I believed her,” he said. “I’m not saying that to get out of it. I’m just telling you. I believed her my whole life. And I’m behind on the house, Kristi. Way behind. I couldn’t stand the idea of losing Dad’s place and mine both.”

“So you took it,” I said. Not mean. Just so it was said out loud, at the table, where it belonged.

“So I took it,” he said. “I told myself I was keeping it in the family. I told myself I was protecting it from you.”

He laughed, and it was not a laugh. “From you. Becky showed me the pictures of you on the roof.”

He reached into his jacket and took out an envelope. It was a new deed, the plain kind, filled out with my name and the legal description of the lot.

Becky had found the form and typed it up at her kitchen table.

“I’m putting it back,” he said. “I’ll sign it in front of a notary Monday, at your credit union, if you’ll let me. Whatever it costs to record, I’ll pay it. I can’t pay the tax. I’m sorry. I can’t.”

“I’ll pay the tax,” I said. “It’s my cabin. That’s how it works.”

He put his face in his hands. His father used to do that too, when the news was too big to look at.

I reached across the table and put my hand on his arm and left it there.

“I’m sorry, Kristi,” he said through his fingers. “I’m so sorry. I lied to you two weeks after we buried him. Dad would have killed me.”

“Your daddy would have taken you out on the dock and not said a word for an hour,” I said. “And then he would have asked you if the crappie were biting.”

Keith laughed, a real one this time, wet and surprised. Becky, standing by the sink, laughed too and wiped her eyes with a paper towel.