“What if they hadn’t helped?”
“Then I’d have called the sheriff,” I said. “Tomorrow. I told myself that on the drive over. I’d give them each a chance to do the right thing, and if they didn’t, I’d stop being polite.” I put a hand on his arm. “I’m not a saint. I’m just a woman who figured out which fight to pick.”
He stared at his boots for a long time. Then, quietly, so only I could hear it, he said, “Dad would have done it that way.”
“I think he would.”
“He’d have cut the hay, and then he’d have said, ‘Well, that’s that,’ and gone to get a drink of water.”
I laughed, and a tear slipped out, and I let it.
“That’s exactly what he’d have done,” I said.
I did not tell Ben the rest. I didn’t have the words yet.
