The other passed it over.
The silence between them became comfortable.
On the eleventh Saturday, Ron finished his work.
Before leaving, he walked into the pantry.
He asked Nate to stand against the old doorframe.
Then he drew a pencil mark above those made decades earlier.
Nate, 36 years.
He wrote the year beside it.
Then he handed me the pencil.
I asked Ron to stand against the same frame and marked his height too.
For a moment, he looked at those new lines without speaking.
The little boy who had spent nearly sixty years avoiding this house had finally returned.
And now he had left his mark inside it.
That October, Nate and I moved into the farmhouse.
I gave notice at the diner and returned to working only my hospital job.
Our home wasn’t perfect.
But the porch was solid, the lights worked, and the kitchen was warm.
