“For a down payment on a subdivision house?” Patty asked.

“For a place where nobody can tell us we owe them a thank-you,” I said, taking the four dollars in tips and sliding them into my apron pocket.

Patty looked at me for three seconds, nodded once without asking anything else, and filled my coffee mug to the brim.

Twelve miles north, near the county line, rain was turning to freezing sleet along the ditch of a dirt road.

Nate lay flat on his back on a rubber mat in six inches of icy mud under a giant John Deere combine.