And she heard his hesitation and went ahead. When she spoke he saw a triumph in her eyes, a fierce pride. “Mother knew the value of money. More than Father ever did. She knew that freedom is only a word without money. Freedom is assumptions but money is actuality. That was why she cared for it. Not for any everyday thing. Even though she was a woman could dress herself in style. But that was all going to town. Around here she was happy in wore-out old clothes. Barefoot frost to frost. It was two things she understood: that the only hope in this world was money. And education. You put those two together and the world opens up for you ways it will not, cannot, otherwise. The point is, there is money in the bank. Money and then some to send you to the best school you can or want to attend.” She paused again and held up a hand as if foreseeing protest and said, “And it is not something you should feel is being given for free. A part of it is yours. A part of it always belonged to your father. The same way a part of this farm did, and so belongs to you. But you’re no farm-boy. That’s clear. Now, Sister and I live here and will until we die. But we’ve no great need for the money, not much of it anyhow. So. There is more than enough. For you to go ahead any way you want.”

He was quiet a long time. Both women sat watching him. He reached up and stroked his nose with his thumb and bent back forefinger. He felt teary and would not cry and a part of him felt he was too close to tears too much of the time these days for it to be good for him. He wanted again nothing more than to be sitting in the house outside Bethlehem with his father, the two of them arguing in the amused not very serious way they always had over anything at all. He looked at the tall old beautiful-woman version of his father before him and said, “Pop was not broke. Besides the place over there he left to me, there was a pile of money. I’ve got money enough.” And because he did not want them to doubt him, he said, “It’s all rolled up in bundles in a shoebox outside right now. In the back end of the car.”

“Don’t you touch that money!” Abby’s hands working together before her, over and around themselves. “Put it in a bank! Then, four-five years from now, you finish school, know what you want from yourself, you’ll have something to start off with.” She stopped and took her bottom lip between her teeth a moment and said, “Maybe then, that money’ll do you some good. You’ll see.”