It was the letter from my cardiologist. A leaking heart valve, surgery recommended within the year. I had told no one. Travis found it in January, the week he lost his job, when he came over to fix my washer and went looking for a towel. He read it standing in my sewing room and never said a word. He decided that if I wasn’t ready to tell him, he would simply move closer.

That was what soon enough meant. He wasn’t counting acres. He was counting time. He poured that pad behind my barn because he was scared, and because if something happened in the night, he wanted to be fifty steps away instead of eleven miles. He just didn’t know how to say it, so he said the worst possible thing instead. I sat there with my fork in my hand, and for the first time I saw that slab for what it was.

I had the surgery in September. Travis drove me, and he slept in the hospital chair four nights running. His wife ran the corn stand. Lily watered the apple trees with a coffee can and reported to me by phone every evening. The valve held. The doctor said I could expect a good many more summers if I quit hauling feed sacks, so Travis hauls them now. He stops by every morning with coffee before he opens the shop, and he still does.

In October we went to the lawyer together. Travis signed a lease for the ground under his shop, one dollar a year, and I gave him back the $7,200 he’d spent on the concrete, because Leonard would have. The farm will go to Travis someday, but the orchard is written down as Lily’s. I framed Leonard’s catalog page and hung it in the shop. Back lot. When we get to it. We got to it.