She filled in the numbers, zero zero over one hundred, and signed her name in a dark black slant across the bottom line.

She tore the blue check out of the book with a dry rip that echoed across the gravel yard.

She held it up toward Nate, pinching the corner so tight the paper curled.

“Take it,” Judy said, looking up at him with wet eyes.

“Take it so everyone has twenty thousand dollars and nobody can say another word about those forty acres on the creek.”

Nate stayed on the middle porch step without reaching out his hand.