I’d searched the workshop months earlier but hadn’t found the notebook.
Then I remembered the feed truck.
Dad sometimes kept important things beneath the passenger seat.
I climbed into the cab.
His gloves were still on the dashboard.
His seed-company cap lay on the passenger side.
For four months, I’d avoided touching anything on that side of the truck.
It still felt like Dad’s space.
But now I reached beneath the seat.
I pulled out a heavy chain.
Then jumper cables.
A small coffee can filled with spare pins.
And finally, a zippered bank deposit bag.
I opened it.
Inside was the green notebook.
I smiled faintly.
Of course Dad had put it there.
But something else was inside.
A plain white envelope.
My name was written across the front in Dad’s unmistakable block handwriting.
**Wade Kucera.**
Our road.
Elba, Nebraska.
There was even a stamp attached.
But the envelope had never been mailed.
I stared at it.
Then sat on the truck’s running board and carefully opened it with my pocketknife.
Inside was a single sheet torn from a yellow legal pad.
The letter was dated November ninth.
Four days before Dad visited Don Jensen to prepare his will.
I began reading.
*Wade,*
*I’m not much good at explaining things, so I’ll put this plainly.*
*The farm isn’t free and clear. I borrowed against it when I installed the irrigation pivot. I borrowed again when your mother got sick. And after the flood in 2019, I borrowed more.*
*The total debt is $388,000.*
I stopped.
My hands went cold.
Three hundred eighty-eight thousand dollars?
Dad had never told me.
I continued.
*The annual payment is $38,000. The farm hasn’t made enough clear profit to cover that payment in six years.*
*I’ve been borrowing money to pay money I already owed.*
*I’m ashamed of it.*
I swallowed.
All those years I’d worked beside him, I assumed the farm was financially stable.
He’d never allowed me to see the accounts.
I simply trusted him.
Then I reached the next paragraph.
*If I leave the farm to you, I know exactly what you’ll do.*
*You’ll keep it.*
*You’ll work harder, borrow more, and spend the rest of your life trying to save every acre.*
*Theresa will go without things she deserves, just like your mother did.*
*You’ll never complain.*
*And you’ll keep sacrificing until there’s nothing left of you.*
My eyes blurred.
Dad had known me.
Better than I’d realized.
The letter continued.
*Phil will sell the farm if he needs to. He understands money, and he doesn’t love the land the way you do.*
*Don’t blame him for that.*
*When he was nineteen, I told him he wasn’t cut out to be a farmer. He believed me. That’s my fault.*
*Phil will clear the debt. There should be money left, and I believe he’ll divide it fairly with you.*
*I’m trusting him to do the right thing.*
Then came the sentence that explained my inheritance.
*I’m leaving you the feed truck because it’s paid for.*
*It’s probably the only thing on the place that is.*
I covered my mouth.
I’d said almost those exact words to Theresa the day I brought the truck home.
Then I read the final lines.
*I should mail this letter.*
*Knowing me, I’ll probably leave it in the truck.*
*You were the best help a man ever had.*
*I should’ve told you that while it would’ve meant something.*
*Dad.*
I read those words twice.
Then I tried to read them again.
But tears blurred the page.
Twenty-two years I’d worked beside that man.
