Part 8
On Thursday morning, Vera handed Beth the keys so she could move the truck out of the way. It was the first time she’d let anyone else drive it since David died. Beth asked which drawer held the spare fuses, then remembered they were all in cases now and gave a small, embarrassed laugh.
“Just across the yard,” Vera said. “It’ll manage.”
She listened to the engine turn over and kept working at the bench. The last of Alan’s nine mixers was ready, and she went through the inspection sheet while the truck rolled past the open bay door. She had time to do the final checks properly because she had cleared the day of other promises.
Alan arrived with his mechanic shortly after lunch. Vera took them through the completed equipment first, showing what she’d replaced, what she’d adjusted, and what she recommended watching as the machines returned to use. She left the three older units uncovered beside their separate parts trays.
“I should have inspected those before I gave you a completion price,” she said.
Alan examined the trays. “Yes, you should.”
They settled the labor on the nine accepted units at twenty-two hundred fifty dollars. There was no charge for restoring the other three to the condition in which they had arrived. Vera gave Alan the supplier information she’d found, without presenting the unsuccessful search as extra billable work.
His mechanic started the truck and drove it down the lane, then came back to inspect it on level ground. While they worked, Vera carried the last empty parts bin into the farmhouse. Through the kitchen window she could see Alan pointing to the repair on the lower door.
Beth was wrapping sandwiches for the drive home. She offered Vera one, and Vera took it, though she thought she couldn’t eat. Standing at the counter, she finished half before she noticed she’d started.
“I don’t know where to put everything,” she said.
Beth looked toward the packed cases by the wall. “The tools?”
Vera shook her head. She could have listed the jacket, the maps, the worn space on the seat, the habit of saying a thing aloud because somebody used to be there to hear it. The list would still have missed most of what she meant.
Beth finished wrapping the other sandwich. “You can bring a box to my house,” she said. “I have a cupboard. It doesn’t all have to go into the room you rent.”
Vera set the food down and pressed her fingers against the edge of the counter. Her sister stood beside her without reaching for a bank statement or a trash bag. For a little while they let the truck engine fill the kitchen.
The inspection found things Vera already knew about: the aging tires, the repaired door, a small seep the mechanic wanted watched. Alan didn’t use them to lower his offer. He wanted the service body for his own equipment runs and had priced an old working truck, not a restored one.
“Six thousand,” he said. “Your tools stay with you. The shelving stays, like we said.”
Vera checked the written sale details and the payment arrangement before signing. She told him about the awkward lower drawer and demonstrated how it sometimes caught, then stopped herself from giving him a tour of every adjustment David had made. Alan would learn the truck by using it.
There was one small metal tray still clipped beneath the driver’s seat. She’d overlooked it while packing because she rarely used it now. Alan stepped back when she asked to remove it, and she knelt on the running board with the passenger door open beside her.
The tray held pencils, an old pair of safety glasses, and a folded card with a customer’s gate directions. David had drawn an arrow beside a note that said DOG IS FRIENDLY, GATE ISN’T. Vera remembered the bent latch and the enormous dog watching from the kitchen window while they worked.
She sat on the edge of the seat with the card in her hand. This was the place where she usually found another reason to postpone a thing. One more drawer to search, one more object that made the whole vehicle seem necessary.
She put the card in the atlas inside her tool bag. Then she removed the tray, stood up carefully, and closed the door. The truck was empty of her work.
Walt called while Alan was finishing the paperwork. Dr. Cooper had approved the short move after that morning’s recheck, and he could haul Clover and Otis on Saturday if the new place was ready. Vera confirmed the date and told him she would call Friday evening only after the fence, water, feed, and access were checked.
She wasn’t going to ask Edith to decide at the gate.
The truck payment and the separate payment for the accepted work arrived as arranged, and Vera verified them before completing the handover. The amounts on the screen were larger than anything she’d received for a long time. She set the phone beside the title documents and picked up the two keys.
The taped spare felt rough against the good one. She had an absurd impulse to keep it, even though the lock it opened would no longer belong to her. She laid both keys in Alan’s open hand.
“That tape will come off,” he said, looking at the spare.
“Probably.”
Alan asked where to unload the used stock tank Vera had selected on her first visit, now included in her purchases for Edith’s field. She showed him the space beside the packed tools. Ordinary business kept happening while she stood without her truck keys, and she was grateful nobody had noticed how hard that was.
All twelve mixers went onto Alan’s equipment trailer, the three unfinished machines with their parts trays secured separately. His mechanic drove the service truck out of the yard, and Alan followed in the tow vehicle. Vera watched until the gray patch on the door disappeared behind the roadside trees.
The silence afterward contained the barn fan, a loose length of chain tapping a post, and Beth moving dishes in the kitchen. Vera waited for something larger to happen inside her. Instead she noticed that the handcart was blocking the bay doorway and moved it clear.
She called the fencing supplier, paid for the materials already selected, and confirmed the hay delivery Jess had helped her price. Then she opened the banking app and found Jess’s saved payment details. The remaining balance on the hours sheet was still three hundred seventy-two dollars.
Vera checked the number against the sheet, entered it, and pressed Send.
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