“He stopped by to drop off some hardware,” she said, leaning on the door frame.

“He knows about modern appliances.

He doesn’t spend his entire life covered in sawdust.”

“Rob sells car parts,” I said.

“Rob makes money,” she said.

“That’s the difference.”

She turned and headed back across the yard to the house, her heels crunching on the gravel.

I picked up a square of sandpaper and returned to the chair leg, but the wood felt cold beneath my hand.

***

The kitchen refrigerator was humming its loud, ragged tune when I came in the back door twenty minutes later.

The plastic latch on the crisper drawer was broken, held together by a strip of gray tape I had stuck on before harvest season.

My oldest boy, Mark, stood at the sink with both hands jammed deep in his back pockets.

He was twenty-two at the time, broad through the shoulders the way my father used to be.

I put the grocery bag on the counter beside the bread box.