The Widow Who Planted Across the Road
Scott turned into the field without stopping at the house. He pulled up beside my planter, got out, swung the conveyor arm over the first box, and started filling it. He did not say a word.
He did not look at me. He filled every box on that planter, and then he got back in his pickup and pulled the tender over to the end of the field and unhooked it there and left it.
He was walking back to his pickup when I caught up to him.
“Scott.”
He stopped. He did not turn around right away. He was always the quiet one of the three of them, the one who stood at the back of every room.
“You’ll need that the rest of the week,” he said finally. “Bring it back when you’re done. Bags’ll kill you.”
“Thank you.”
He turned around then. His eyes were red. “I should have said something in that basement,” he said.
“Randy had it all worked out, and I let him do the talking, because I always let Randy do the talking. And I sat there, and Jeff’s not cold yet, and I’m telling his wife to get out of his house.”
He shook his head. “I’ve been sick about it since March. I’m sorry, Melissa.”
“I know you are,” I said.
“That’s all,” he said, and got in his pickup and drove back across the road.
With the tender, Luke and I planted almost forty acres that day. Abby rode with him the whole afternoon.
When I brought them sandwiches at four, she was explaining to him how her dad liked to do the end rows first, and Luke was nodding like she was teaching him something he did not know.
It rained on Friday, a slow, soft, all-day rain, the kind you pray for on fresh-planted ground, and Saturday stayed too wet to run.
I had about twenty acres left. Across the road, they had their last field on the north end left to plant.
On Saturday evening, the phone rang. It was Lori.
“Sunday dinner’s at twelve-thirty,” she said. “Like always. I expect you and Abby.”
I did not answer right away.
“I’m setting your places, Melissa,” she said. “Whether you come or not, I’m setting them. So you might as well come and eat.”
We went to church in the morning, and afterward we drove across the road to the house I had lived in for twenty years and parked in the yard where I used to park.
It was strange walking in the back door as a guest. Lori had put a fresh tablecloth on, the one with the blue stitching. The roast was already resting on the stove.
Scott and his wife were there, and Luke, and Randy was sitting at the head of the table, where he had always sat at family dinners since his dad passed.
There were two places set on the left side of the table.
At one of them was my old coffee cup, the white one with the chip in the handle that I had left behind in the cupboard because I did not have room in the box.
Randy stood up when we came in. That was not like him. He waited until I sat down before he sat back down.