Dad knew we hadn’t spoken properly since Mom’s funeral fourteen years ago, when Dennis left for Lincoln and never really came back. He wrote that if he gave me the farm, Dennis would never have a reason to come home. But if he gave Dennis the land, sooner or later the land would bring him to my door, the way it brought every Larsen home. Dad was right, and it had only taken one bad crop.

The letter ended with instructions. Once Dennis asked for help, he was to deed me half of the farm, and the rent from the other half would pay me back for twenty-five years of work Dad never put on paper. Mr. Hollis had already drawn up the paperwork. And the feed truck, he wrote, was for the day we planted together. “Check the glove box,” the last line said. “You’ll need what’s in it.”

Inside the glove box was Dad’s old pocket notebook. Every field, every soil test, every drainage tile he had ever laid, mapped in pencil over forty years. Dennis laughed and cried at the same time. We were in the fields by sunrise. I replanted the bare sections, fixed the pivot, and Arlo lent us his sprayer. Dennis drove the feed truck. Arlo leaned on the fence and said Dad would be proud of those rows. By September, we had saved most of the crop.

Dennis signed the deed that fall, and he still comes home every other weekend to drive a tractor badly. Marcy says he’s getting better. I don’t. He brings his grandkids out to ride in the feed truck. Dad’s gloves stay on the dashboard, exactly where he left them. Arne’s list… no list here, just Dad’s notebook in the glove box. And every spring, Dennis and I plant the first row together, slow and straight, the way Dad always wanted.