“Good. Hard. Good.”
“Earl would be proud,” Vern said. “He used to tell me you’d be a nurse someday. Since you were about eight. Said you were the only one in the family who could stand the sight of blood.”Plan Family Trips
I laughed. It came out shaky.
I didn’t know how to start. So I just said it.
“Vern,” I said. “I want to buy the pond.”
He set his coffee cup down.
“The two acres around it,” I said. “With the pond and the cottonwood and the dam. That’s all. I don’t want the rest. Just the pond.”
I took a folded piece of paper out of my coat pocket. A cashier’s check from the Iowa State Bank. I’d gotten it that morning. I slid it across the table to him.
“I have fourteen thousand dollars,” I said. “I know that’s probably not enough. I know what ground’s
