Page 55 of Omega’s Fold

She watches me eat for a moment, but she does not ask another question.

Across the table Eli catches my eye. He raises his glass, half an inch, a small private toast to nothing, and he drinks.

My father turns the conversation, gently, back to his spring lecture.

My mother passes me the potatoes.

I eat. I am home, and I am cross, and I am not thinking about him.

I am not thinking about him. I refuse to think about him. Stupid Wyatt Briggs.

15. Wyatt

The bank is on the corner of Fifth and Allen, opposite the courthouse and two doors down from the hardware store. I have parked the truck across the street where I can see the front door of the bank from the cab. I have been parked here for the better part of an hour. My appointment is at ten. I need to be inside in twelve minutes.

I make myself look up. The bank has its front door propped open with a sandbag against the autumn wind. A woman in a navy coat goes in. A man in a feed cap comes out. The lights in the window are on though it’s full daylight, and someone has put a paper turkey up on the inside of the glass, the cut-out kind a child would make, with a fan of red and brown feathers. Thanksgiving is three weeks off.

Eleven minutes to ten.

I let my hands off the wheel and I work them, one at a time, against the thigh of my jeans.

I have not slept properly in I don’t know how long. I’ve been getting up earlier than I need to, doing the morning round of the cattle in the dark and coming back in to find that it is still too early to start cooking breakfast for Matthew and Caleb.

I open the glove box and pull out a manila folder with the word BANK written on the tab in my mother’s handwriting.

She kept the bank correspondence in this folder for as long as I knew her and when she died I kept everything in it that was already in it, and put the new things in it as they came.

I open it.

The top thing is the letter from August. Notice of arrears. Two missed scheduled payments. Please contact the office at your earliest convenience.

The second thing is the letter from September. Notice of arrears. Three missed scheduled payments. We strongly urge you to contact the office to arrange a meeting.

The third thing is the letter from last week, which is the one that got me into the truck. Notice of arrears. Four missed scheduled payments. A meeting has been scheduled for the date and time below. Failure to attend may result in formal proceedings.

I know I should have contacted them when I missed the first payment, but what were they going to do? I don’t have the money. I just don’t. I can’t pay money that I don’t have.

There’s an offer from the Linden Group in the same folder. I have read it more times than I want to admit.

It’s not enough to settle the mortgage. The compensation offer covers about seventy-two cents on every dollar I owe. I would walk off the land with no land and debt that I will be paying off for the rest of my life.

The other thing I have done, which the bank doesn’t know about, is talk to the realtor. I drove down to Eastfield last Thursday morning. She was kind and said she could list it for me but everyone knows what is happening in Parish Ridge. No one is going to buy a ranch without water.

Now it’s eight minutes to ten. I don’t want to go in there.

I push the door open and I get out.

The bank has a green carpet and a row of three teller windows on the left and a waiting area with three chairs on the right, and a coffee machine in the corner. The receptionist is a woman in her fifties with reading glasses on a chain around her neck and a neat sign on the front of her desk that says ‘Please wait to be called’.

I don’t need to wait long.

“Mr. Briggs. Mrs. Holloway will see you now. Down the hall, second door on the left.”

I take my hat off. I have come in with my hat on, like I have been raised better than to do, and I take it off now and hold it against my chest.

The door is open. The woman behind the desk is maybe fifty-five, wearing a grey sweater set with a small gold pin on the lapel.

“Mr. Briggs. Carol Holloway. Please come in. Sit down.”