The envelope on the passenger seat of my Silverado was heavier than it looked. Inside was a bill of sale: Hart's Hardware & Feed, 214 South Main Street, Mars Hill, North Carolina, transferred from Lewis Hart to Caleb Hart for the sum of one dollar. My phone buzzed in the cupholder. Paisley. The message read: "Did you tell Colleen yet?"
I didn't answer. I was on my way to the courthouse, not to tell Colleen about Paisley, but to hand my son the one thing I had left that was worth anything.
I'd been married to Colleen thirty-eight years. We got married at the Madison County Register of Deeds in 1986, when I was twenty-four and she was twenty-two. She worked the register at Hart's back when it was my daddy's place. I used to stack the fifty-pound feed sacks myself so she wouldn't throw out her back. She gave me two sons, Caleb and Travis, and four grandchildren who call me Pop. She gave me a life I did not earn.
And I gave Paisley eleven months.
Paisley Denning was thirty-six, a loan officer at First Bank & Trust in Asheville. She came into the store in March to talk about a line of credit for spring planting season. She had a tablet, red-framed reading glasses, and she laughed at my dumb joke about fertilizer prices. I don't know when business turned into something else. By June, I was telling Colleen I had inventory meetings in Weaverville. Paisley and I would meet at a brewery on the South Slope. She made me feel like I'd rewired something in my chest. I checked my phone under the dinner table while Colleen talked about her tomato plants and the price of mulch at Ingles.
That was the part I can't explain. I wasn't looking for a way out. I was looking for a way to feel twenty-six again.
In late October, Paisley set a plastic fork down on a paper plate at the tailgate market and said, "I'm not going to be the other woman, Lew. You've got until Friday. Choose. If you pick me, we're leaving Mars Hill. I have a job lead in Greenville. You'll need to sell the store."
She had already found a condo in Greenville. She needed six thousand dollars for earnest money. The store had been appraised at two hundred fourteen thousand six hundred dollars. She knew that. She had done the credit report herself.
I went home that night and stood in the kitchen at 1:40 a.m., eating a cold biscuit while Colleen slept. The fridge hummed. I replayed Paisley's voicemail twice with the volume low.
The next morning, Colleen found a receipt in my coat from a pizzeria in Asheville. Eighty-three dollars and sixty cents. She didn't shout. She set it on the counter next to the coffee pot and said, "Who did you take?"
I told her it was a vendor from Johnson City.
She put the receipt in the trash and went to work at the elementary school cafeteria. She had worked there twenty-three years. I watched her go. I didn't call Paisley that day. I didn't delete her number either.
On Thursday, the day before the deadline, I drove to the bank. I had the six thousand in my pocket, ready to put a deposit on the condo in Greenville. I sat in the parking lot with the engine off and the radio tuned to 570 AM. The farm report was talking about corn prices. I checked the bank app on my phone. The mortgage on our house still had a balance of seventy-three thousand four hundred dollars. Colleen's name was on that loan. She had cosigned it in 2009, right after the recession, when the bank wanted to call the note on the store.
I walked inside and asked the teller for a payoff statement. She printed it out. She said, "You and your wife both need to sign if you're making any changes."
I said, "I know."
That night, I didn't go to Greenville. I called Caleb and asked him to meet me at the store after closing.
Caleb is forty-one. He's been working at Hart's since he was fifteen. He knows the business better than I do. He came in through the back door and saw me sitting on a stack of feed bags. A mouse ran along the baseboard. I didn't move.
He said, "Dad, what's going on?"
I handed him a manila envelope. Inside was a bill of sale. Hart's Hardware & Feed, transferred to Caleb Hart for one dollar.
He read it. He set it down on the counter. He didn't ask why. He just said, "I'll take it if you stay on and show me the books for a year."
I signed it at the bank the next morning. The notary was a woman named Donna who had seen me and Colleen at church potlucks for thirty years. She stamped the paper without saying much. I handed her two dollars for the notary fee. Caleb signed below me. The store was his.
After that, I took out my phone and deleted Paisley's contact. Then I drove to the elementary school and waited until Colleen came out at 2:45. She was carrying a plastic bag with her lunch container. I rolled down the window and said, "Get in. I need to show you something."
We drove to the store. Caleb had already hung a temporary sign: HART & SON. He was inside with a drill. Colleen read the sign. She read the bill of sale. She said, "You gave it to Caleb for a dollar?"
I said, "I had to."
She didn't ask any more questions. She went inside and hugged Caleb. I stood on the sidewalk, clutching the payoff statement from the bank. My hand was shaking.
Three days later, Paisley showed up at the store. She parked in the space by the propane tank and came in through the front door. Her hair was tied back. She had a coffee cup from Biscuit Head. She saw the new sign through the window, then she saw the bill of sale on the counter, in the frame my son had bought at the thrift store for three dollars.
She said, "You sold it to your son."
I said, "No. I gave it to him."
She waited. I didn't offer her a chair. I didn't offer her the six thousand dollars.
She said, "So that's it?"
I said, "That's it."
She left the coffee cup on the counter and walked out. The cup left a ring on the wood. Caleb wiped it with a rag. He didn't say anything.
That night, I gave Colleen my phone. It was unlocked. I said, "The code is four-seven-one-one. Call her if you want. I'll wait on the porch."
She took the phone, set it on the nightstand, and said, "I don't need to call her. I need you to fix the gutter on the back porch before the rain comes."
I fixed the gutter the next morning. It took me two hours. The rain came at 4:10 p.m. I stood under the porch and listened to the water running where it was supposed to run.
