At my high school graduation party, Dad told me there was no money for college because “school was always harder” for me—while my 16-year-old sister had a new Jeep and $60,000 in her college fund. I already had a college acceptance letter in my pocket, but he wouldn’t even complete the financial-aid form. When I packed to move in with the uncle he called “the family loser,” Dad stood in the hallway and said, “You’ll be back by the Fourth of July.”

Marva signed every check. Everyone, Marva said from her desk without looking up. You came here for a desk, I said. I offered you a truck. That’s not an insult. That’s the same job Hoyt offered me the night you put me out. It’s the best thing anybody ever did for me. Dad’s voice went up.

So that’s it. My own brother’s going to turn me away. And Hoyt, who hadn’t said a word the whole time, put his coffee cup down on the counter. Nobody turned you away, Monty. He said, “The boy offered you a job. Same one he took when you sent him out of your house with two duffel bags.

He didn’t have $9,000 and nobody bought anything from him.” It got very quiet in the shop. You could hear the percolator. Dad looked at Hoyt, then he looked at me, and then he said it anyway. You think you’re real smart now, don’t you, buddy? You told me school was always harder for me, I said.

Maybe it was, but I can read a date, Dad. And I can read your name. Nobody said anything for a long time. “The route jobs open until Monday,” I said. “Both of them. Seventeen an hour. Trucks leave at 7:00. They leave whether you’re on them or not.” Dad picked up the will. He left the bill of sale where it was.

He walked to the door without a word and Skyler followed him with her portfolio held against her chest. Mom stopped at the door. She turned around and looked at me. “We’re still your parents, Reed. I asked you for one thing, Mom,” I said. “Not money, one form. 20 minutes at the kitchen table.

You had 6 years to be my parents. You’re 6 years late.” She went out. The door swung shut. Grandpa’s sign rattled on its hooks over the frame. Marva got up, poured three cups of coffee from the percolator, and set one in front of me, one in front of Hoyt, and kept one for herself.

Well, she said, that’s my filing done. Nobody heard from a lawyer. Not that week, not that month, not ever. I’ve thought about that a lot. Somewhere in Sedalia, there’s a lawyer friend of my dad’s who either told him the truth or never existed. Monday morning at 6:55, a car pulled into the lot.

It wasn’t my dad. It was Skyler. White sneakers, a ponytail, and a big insulated water jug. She didn’t say much. She said, “Mom said I need to bring in something.” That was it. I put her with Junior. Junior is a patient man. She lasted until Tuesday at noon. It was 91° and they were setting up 40 units at a road construction site south of Clinton.

And she sat down in Junior’s truck, turned the air conditioning all the way up, and called Mom to come get her. Marva mailed her a check for a day and a half, $24 before taxes. Marva said she put a stamp on it like she was mailing a birthday card. Dad never came at all.

The rest of it, I found out the way everybody finds things out in a small town. In July, Skyler’s white Jeep showed up on the front row of a used car lot on Broadway with a price written on the windshield in yellow marker. Mom told her sister, my aunt Gail, that they needed the house payment more than they needed a third car. Aunt Gail told her hairdresser.

The hairdresser told Marva. Skyler drives Mom’s old Equinox now. She’s still at the boutique on Ohio Avenue. Last I heard, she had a second job doing social media for a dentist’s office, which honestly, good for her. And then came August, the state fair. The fair hires a lot of seasonal people every year.

Ticket booths, gate checkers, parking. It pays about $12 an hour, and it’s mostly retirees and college kids. The first Thursday of the fair, I was driving a golf cart from the grandstand to the livestock barns at about 6:00 in the evening to check a trailer and I cut across the big parking lot on the south side. There was my dad, yellow vest, orange flag, a visor from the fair with a little blue ribbon on it.