Part 4
“Mine,” Jess said when Vera didn’t answer. “If we agree on the time and you pay me for it. Or somebody else’s. It can’t be a blank.”
Vera wrote JESS, then added the arrangement to their hours sheet. She asked before putting down a second morning. The small pause cost her more effort than the writing, but Jess stayed to help finish the list.
On Saturday, Beth came to sort the upstairs rooms. She brought sandwiches wrapped in paper and a tape measure for a dresser her son might want. Vera tried to tell her about the leased field before they had taken their coats off.
“After we eat,” Beth said. “I haven’t had breakfast.”
At the table, she pushed one of the sandwiches toward Vera and opened the file she’d brought. There were receipts for their father’s care, the farm’s expenses, and money Beth had taken from her own savings. Vera recognized amounts she had approved over the phone without asking when Beth would need them back.
“The roofer’s coming before it freezes,” Beth said. “I can’t put that off again.”
Vera had been to her sister’s house once since David died. She remembered a bucket in the hallway and Beth moving it with her foot to let her through. She hadn’t asked about that, either.
They worked upstairs until late afternoon. In their father’s room, Beth held a shirt against herself to judge whether the fabric was worth keeping, then folded it for the donation box. Vera reached for it before she knew what she meant to do with it.
“Do you want it?” Beth asked.
Vera looked at the shirt in her hands. It smelled of a closed drawer. She put it into the box and pressed it flat so the lid would close.
Beth carried the box down while Vera followed with the lighter one. At the foot of the stairs, her sister leaned against the wall and flexed her fingers. Vera took the heavier box from her without announcing that she had noticed.
On Monday, Dr. Cooper returned. Clover had begun finishing the feed prescribed for her, but the veterinarian’s hand still moved carefully over the sharp places along her back. She watched Otis, asked about his nursing, and made a small change to the ongoing plan.
“Better isn’t finished,” she said. “Keep the records. Call if either of them changes.”
Vera mentioned that Clover seemed unsettled when she left for service calls. Jess was standing beside the milk-room door, holding the chart. She turned it so the veterinarian could see the entries from the mornings Vera had been away.
“She ate,” Jess said. “You can see when. Yesterday she left the stemmy bits, same as when you’re here.”
Vera studied the neat block letters. She remembered coming home yesterday and immediately adding more hay, certain that the cow had waited for her. Jess had said nothing while she did it.
That evening Vera completed the lease paperwork with Edith and transferred the nine hundred dollars. It used most of what she had put aside from the first calls, but the field would be hers to use once the repairs and care arrangements were ready. She could stop searching for a place and start making it safe.
At Edith’s suggestion, she reserved the twenty-third with the fence contractor who had maintained the place for years. He would set the damaged corner right and check the enclosure before she used it for cattle. Vera wrote his labor estimate beside the materials bill.
Alan called the next morning about twelve commercial mixers he’d bought from a distributor clearing old stock. They needed cleaning, inspection, and repairs before a wholesale shipment on October twenty-third. He had parts money available and wanted to know whether Vera would quote the labor.
She drove over after the morning feed. Nine mixers stood in a row, with three more wrapped on a pallet behind them. She examined two of the unwrapped machines, recognized the model, and asked Alan what had been reported wrong.
“Used equipment,” he said. “I don’t know until someone opens it.”
Vera should have unwrapped the other pallet. She should have priced the inspection separately from the repairs. Instead she counted the machines, thought about winter hay, and gave him a batch price before lunch.
Three thousand dollars in labor, with Alan buying authorized replacement parts. Payment when the full batch passed inspection and was ready for his truck on the twenty-third. Vera wrote those terms herself, then read them twice before signing.
“You sure about the date?” Alan asked.
“I’ve got help now.”
He arranged to deliver the mixers to the farm’s solid south bay, where Vera had set up her workbench. The electrical supply there was sound and the floor could take the equipment, though the unused north end of the old barn was closed off. They agreed on the work area and the collection time, and Alan left her a copy of the order.
Jess arrived after lunch to find Vera moving the parts drawers closer to the bench. She helped without being asked, then stopped when Vera showed her the number of machines coming. She looked at the service calendar on the wall.
“What are we moving?”
“We can work around the calls.”
“Marlene’s Wednesday. The diner is Thursday. I’ve got Naomi’s school meeting Thursday afternoon, remember?”
Vera remembered the school meeting because Jess had drawn a box around it. She remembered the church hinge because the replacement was already in the truck. Looking at the two calendars together, she could see that the time she’d sold Alan did not exist in one uninterrupted piece.
“I’ll handle the extra hours,” she said.
Jess folded her arms. “You still have to pay for mine on Friday.”
“Of course.”
Vera put the batch order in the folder beneath her route sheets. She didn’t show Jess the payment condition. If the job stayed on schedule, the difference would be brief, and she could cover it somehow. She had made more difficult weeks work when David was alive.
Alan had the machines delivered later that afternoon. Once they were safely in place, Jess removed their loose accessories and labeled separate trays while Vera inspected the first unit. In the back of the bay, Otis’s occasional call reached them through the closed dividing wall.
Vera worked until Jess’s agreed stopping time, then stayed at the bench alone. The first mixer needed a straightforward repair. The second looked much the same, and the familiar work quieted something in her that had stayed tense for months.
She finally cut the wrapping from the rear pallet after supper. The three machines beneath it were smaller and older than the others. When she opened the first one, the work light caught the broken teeth of a gear that hadn’t been made for years.
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