While he was going over my forty-two-dollar grocery receipt for two jars of peanut butter, his laptop was sitting open on the couch behind him, logged into my credit account.

Mr.

Henderson came back and handed me the three stapled packets in a plain manila envelope.

“Is there anything else on this credit line you need printed before I close the file?” he asked.

“No,” I said.

“This tells me everything I needed to know.”

By noon, the late summer sun sat right overhead, baking the packed dirt driveway beside my father’s equipment shed.

Dad was greasing the front axle on his tractor, his canvas work shirt dark with sweat between his shoulder blades.