Part 6
“When I took the job,” Vera said.
Jess kept her finger beside the date. The small sound of the barn fan filled the space between them. Vera reached for Alan’s order, but Jess shook her head before the paper was out of the folder.
“I don’t need to read it. You knew.”
“I thought the other calls would cover your hours. Then the feed, and the parts I had to pick up—”
“You told me Friday.”
Vera looked at the nine covered mixers. They represented good work, most of it already done, and money that would eventually arrive. From this side of the bench, with her hands still smelling of cleaning solvent, it was hard to understand why she couldn’t make Jess see how close it was.
Then Jess took her own work gloves from the windowsill and folded them together.
“I can give you some tomorrow,” Vera said. “The rest in a few days.”
“I’ve got after-school care coming out of my account. I moved store hours to work here because you said it was paid work. You didn’t ask me to lend you anything.”
Vera started to say that Jess didn’t understand what the animals needed. She could hear the ugliness of that before she said it aloud. Jess had been carrying their feed, cleaning their buckets, and writing down the things Vera claimed nobody else would notice.
“You’re right,” she said.
Jess picked up her jacket. “That doesn’t put it in my account.”
She walked out to her van, then came back for the little tub containing Naomi’s bicycle bell. Vera had forgotten it on a shelf beside the spare washers. Jess took the tub with both hands and tucked it safely against her coat.
“Can we talk about next week?” Vera asked.
“After you pay this week.”
Jess left at the agreed stopping time. Vera stood in the doorway watching her back out, with a foolish hope that she’d lower the window. The van turned onto the road without stopping.
Vera finished the evening care alone. When she lifted a fresh bale, the twine caught beneath her glove and she had to set it down again. Nothing dramatic happened; her back simply wouldn’t let her carry it the way she had planned.
She brought the handcart from the milk room. Jess had used it every day, though Vera kept forgetting that the wheels were good. She rolled the feed into place in two trips and sat on the empty cart afterward, listening to Otis work at his mother’s udder.
There had been a time, near the end of David’s illness, when she couldn’t leave him to take out the garbage. The visiting nurse had found full bags lined against the back door and quietly carried two outside. Vera had cried after the nurse left, furious at being grateful for something she ought to have managed.
She had never told Jess that story. It wouldn’t explain the payment condition anyway. She’d had a clear page, a working pen, and a woman asking when she would be paid.
In the house, Vera opened the banking app. She checked the available balance, the charges that had not yet cleared, and the small savings account she’d kept separate for moving. There was no missing deposit or forgotten payment waiting to make the numbers kinder.
She called Beth and asked whether the estimate for the farm sale had changed. Beth went through the figures with her, including repayment of the money she’d advanced. Vera’s expected remainder was about thirteen hundred dollars, and none of it would be available before closing.
“What happened?” Beth asked.
Vera rubbed at a line of grease on the kitchen table. “I promised somebody money before I had it.”
Her sister was quiet for a moment. “How much?”
Vera told her. Beth did not offer to cover it. In the background, a television was playing and somebody asked where she’d put the roofing estimate.
“Do you want me to come over?” Beth asked.
“Not tonight.”
After they hung up, Vera pulled David’s jacket off the truck seat and carried it inside. There was a faded hardware-store receipt in one pocket and a clean paper napkin in the other. She folded the jacket on the spare bed, then went back for the box of parts.
The atlas stayed where it was. She wasn’t ready to move everything, and she was tired of telling herself she would do it all at once. She closed the passenger door and checked that it had latched.
Saturday morning, she took ninety-six dollars to Marlene. The money came from what she had reserved for her own move, and she made a separate record of that before leaving. Marlene put the payment with the meal accounts and gave her a receipt.
“The cabinet’s holding,” she said.
Vera thanked her. She didn’t ask for the other work back.
At noon she transferred two hundred dollars to Jess and sent a message stating the remaining balance: three hundred seventy-two. She wrote that she would contact her by Monday with a definite payment date. She did not add a photograph of the calf or an explanation of how little sleep she’d had.
Jess replied two hours later. Received. Balance correct.
Vera set the phone facedown on the table. Outside, rain had begun to tick against the windows, the ordinary fine rain that could last half a day. The barn roof over the animals was sound, and their bedding was dry; there was no emergency to keep her from the call she needed to make next.
Edith answered on the fourth ring. Vera told her the fencing work and hay purchase would have to wait a few days. She explained the unpaid wages and the money due from Alan, speaking slowly enough that Edith could interrupt.
“I can hold the arrangement until the twenty-fourth,” Edith said. “But nothing comes into that field until it’s ready. Not even for one night.”
“I understand.”
“Then don’t bring me a cow and ask me to change my mind at the gate.”
Vera wrote down the date. On the same page were the nine hundred dollars she’d already paid, the materials still needed, and the number Jess had written on her hours sheet. Beneath them she copied Alan’s standing offer for the truck, leaving it uncovered this time.
To read the rest of the story – CLICK the NEXT button 👇👇👇