Chapter 6 - The Secret in the Barn
Desperate for answers and refusing to let my son become collateral damage to family secrets, I drove out to Hank Miller’s farm on Wednesday morning without telling Josh. The long gravel driveway was overgrown with weeds, and the once-pristine red barn was peeling, showing gray, weather-beaten wood beneath. As I stepped out of the car, I heard the faint clinking of metal coming from the machine shed.
Inside, old Uncle Hank was sitting on an overturned five-gallon bucket, feebly trying to tighten a hydraulic fitting on a tractor that looked older than I was. When he looked up and saw me standing in the doorway, the wrench slipped from his arthritic fingers and clattered against the dirt floor. His face was sunken, his skin pale and papery from secret chemotherapy treatments, but his eyes were filled with an unbearable, profound sorrow.
""Cassandra,"" he whispered, his voice barely louder than the dry wind rattling the tin roof. ""Earl was out here at dawn. He told me everything.""
I stood there, looking at this fragile old man who had taught my husband how to fish, who had danced at our wedding, and who had carved Bryce's first wooden rocking horse. ""Did you know, Uncle Hank? Did you ask Rodney to do this?""
Hank’s eyes filled with tears, and his frail shoulders shook. ""May God strike me dead if I ever asked for a penny meant for that sweet boy,"" he choked out, clutching his chest. ""Rodney came out here three weeks ago, told me the local grain board had approved a special agricultural grant for senior farmers dealing with drought. He told me it was clean money, Cass. Government money. I took the receipt, thanked the Lord on my knees, and thought my home was safe.""
He reached behind the workbench and pulled out a battered metal lockbox. With trembling hands, he unlocked it and pulled out a yellowed deed to eighty acres of prime river-bottom pasture.
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""I won't let my nephew go to prison, and I sure as hell won't let Bryce suffer because of my failing body,"" Hank said, thrusting the deed toward me. ""Take the land, Cass. Put it up for auction tomorrow. Pay the hospital, pay the doctors, and use whatever's left to put Bryce through college. I’ll pack my bags and move into the county assisted living home. Just please... don't let the law take Rodney away from his little girls.""
I looked at the deed, then at Hank’s desperate, tear-stained face. Taking this land would solve every financial problem Josh and I had ever faced. It would pay the hospital in full and ensure we never worried about Bryce’s care again. But looking into Uncle Hank's devastated eyes, I realized that taking the farm would kill him just as surely as the cancer, and it would leave our family's soul permanently fractured.
