“And in thirty-two years I never took a dime that belonged to someone else.”

Grace came down the farmhouse porch steps holding two cold glass bottles of sweet tea and set them quietly on the corner of the picking bench.

“You let this young woman scrape by on forty-two-dollar grocery runs while you ran eighteen thousand seven hundred thirty-one dollars through her credit line,” Ruth said to Mark.

“I was planning to pay off the whole balance when the late summer harvest settlement came in,” Mark said, his tone shifting into quick, technical excuses.

“The grain elevator check was always supposed to cover the seasonal difference.”