“Yes, Frank,” I said to the father of Trent. “Four dealerships. Nine point three million dollars.” I took the pages gently from his hand and squared them on the tablecloth, next to the hospital discharge papers and the old fishing creel. “I sold everything in February, to an equipment company in Moline. I did not tell my daughter. I wanted to see what a man like me was worth to the people at the table, if he had nothing left to give them.” Becky was staring at the deed in her hands. The mother of Trent was staring at Trent. The fried chicken sat cooling on the platter, and nobody had touched the biscuits.
Trent pushed back his chair. “Leland, this is a misunderstanding,” he said, in the tone he used to sell lake lots. “The county told me the property was seized. I bought it in good faith from a broker. I never forged anything.” I said, “Trent, the signature on the quitclaim deed says it was notarized in Springfield on the fourteenth of April. On the fourteenth of April, I was in Cox South Hospital with pneumonia. I have the discharge papers. The notary journal says no one by my name came through that office. My lawyer has already spoken to the sheriff of Stone County.”
Becky laid the deed on the table very slowly. Her face had gone entirely white. She turned to her husband, and she said, in a voice I had never heard from her, “You told me Daddy gave you power of attorney. You told me he signed because he was confused after June.” Her voice broke. “I drove him to that hospital. I held his hand. I sat in the chair beside his bed. You were in Branson that week, Trent. You told me you were at a seminar.” The mother of Trent put her hand over her mouth. The father of Trent took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand.
An Easter supper and a forged deed showed a tractor salesman what his family was really after and gave him back his lake.
I looked at my daughter, and my heart broke. She was forty one years old, with the eyes of her mother, and she was sitting in my dining room looking as if somebody had pulled the floor out from under her. I wanted to get up and hold her. But there was one more thing I needed to do first. I turned to the parents of Trent. “Frank, Lois,” I said, “I did not ask you here to humiliate you. I know you did not know. You are decent people, and I have always liked you. I only wanted you to see it with your own eyes, so that nobody could tell you later it was a misunderstanding.”
Lois had tears on her cheeks. “Leland,” she said, “our son has done something wicked. I do not know where we went wrong.” I said, “Lois, I am not sure it is the fault of anyone. Sometimes a boy grows up and decides the world owes him a lot. Maybe we all helped.” I faced Trent. He was sitting stiffly now, sweat on his upper lip, his bravado gone. “Here is my offer,” I said. “I will tell the sheriff the deed was an error. I will ask the county to void it. And you will sign a statement admitting the forgery, which my lawyer will hold in his safe. If you ever again touch a dollar or a signature that belongs to me, it goes to the prosecutor.”
Trent nodded numbly. “And one more thing,” I said. “You will pay for the cost of undoing this. All of it. The lawyer, the filing fees, the notary investigation.” He agreed. The deed was voided by the county recorder the following Thursday, and the lot at Table Rock went back into my name, all two hundred feet of shoreline. Becky moved out of her house that same week and into my spare room. I did not ask her to. She simply showed up with two suitcases and a cat. She told me she needed time to think. I told her the room was hers as long as she wanted it.
It took months. Becky and Trent saw a counselor in Springfield, a patient woman with a quiet voice. Trent went to every session. I do not know what was said in that office, and I do not need to. In September, Becky came down to breakfast one morning with a calm look on her face and said, “Daddy, I am going home. I think we are going to be all right.” I said, “Are you sure?” She said, “No. But I am going to try.” I kissed her on the forehead. It is not my place to say who should stay married. It is my place to be here when she needs me.
That fall, I did something I should have done after June died. I drove out to Table Rock, to the lot, in a borrowed truck, with a thermos of coffee. The leaves were turning along the shoreline, red and yellow against the green water. I sat on the tailgate and looked at the lake for two hours. Then I called a builder from Branson. I told him to build a small cabin, one room and a porch, with a stone fireplace and a long dock. I told him I did not want it fancy. I wanted it the way June and I had always talked about, on the porch of a rented camper, when we were young.
The cabin was finished in May. On the first Saturday, I invited the whole family. Becky came with Trent, quiet and polite, and Frank and Lois came too, carrying a covered dish. We ate on the porch. The children fished off the dock. Trent, who was never much of an outdoorsman, sat holding a rod for an hour and never caught a thing, and at the end of the afternoon he walked over to me and said, “Leland, thank you for the second chance.” I said, “Trent, do not thank me. Earn it.” He nodded solemnly. “Every day,” he said.
I hung the old fishing creel of June on the wall above the fireplace. It is a battered wicker basket, the lid held by a leather strap, and it smells like river water and pipe tobacco and forty years of Saturday mornings. Every time I walk past it, I put my hand on it, the way you touch a doorframe on the way into a room you love. The lake is quiet in the evenings. A loon calls from the far shore. And on the porch, in the last light, there are always enough chairs.
