“We bought the Wiebe farm,” I said.

She stared at me.

“Across the road?”

I nodded.

“The little white house?”

“Yes.”

“And the eighty acres?”

“All ours.”

Her eyes widened.

“Are we going to farm it?”

“We’re going to try.”

She wrapped her arms around me.

For the first time since her father’s passing, I heard genuine excitement in her voice.

We moved during the final week of April.

My sister helped us pack.

Neighbors brought trailers.

And we carried twenty years of memories across a gravel road.

As we loaded the last boxes, Randy’s wife, Lori, stopped by.

She looked uncomfortable.

“Melissa, I told Randy the funeral wasn’t the right time to discuss the buyout.”

I nodded.

Then she noticed something hanging beside our old kitchen door.

Jeff’s green seed cap.

He’d worn it every spring.

I had nearly forgotten it.

Abby reached up and took it from the hook.

She placed it on her head.

The brim dropped over her eyebrows.

I had to look away for a moment.

She looked so much like her father.

The first week of May arrived with warm weather.

The ground was ready for planting.

I woke before sunrise, checked the tractor, filled the planter, and prepared for my first day working the farm on my own.

Across the road, Randy and Scott were beginning their planting season with their large equipment.

I started my old tractor.

Then I drove into my eighty-acre field.

Nobody waved.

Randy watched from beside his pickup.

Then he looked away.

I kept driving.

The first day was exhausting.

The planter developed a problem.

I repeatedly stopped to adjust the equipment.

Without a seed tender, I had to lift heavy seed bags into the planter myself.

By afternoon, my shoulders ached.

Abby rode beside me, wearing Jeff’s green cap.

Sometimes she’d point toward the fields across the road.

“Dad used to plant that one first,” she’d say.

I smiled.

“He certainly did.”

By evening, I’d managed to plant only about twenty acres.

Jeff could have done three times that.

When I finally returned home, I was so tired I could barely lift my arms.

Abby made scrambled eggs.

Then she found the liniment Jeff used for his aching knees and gently rubbed some into my shoulders.

“Is this how Dad used to do it?” she asked.

“Just like that.”

I lowered my head so she wouldn’t see my tears.

After dinner, I went outside to refill the planter.

I wanted everything ready before sunrise.

I was so exhausted that I briefly fell asleep while resting against the tractor.

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