Ardis and I had been wintering in Mesa for six years by then.

We rented the same park model every year. A little white one with green trim, at a resort full of Iowa and Minnesota license plates. The biggest argument all winter long was about the shuffleboard schedule.

Going down there was Ardis’s idea the first time.

I retired from the grain elevator at sixty-three, after forty years. And that first winter home, my knees got loud about January. Louder than they ever were when I was working. I’d sit at the kitchen window every morning watching the snow and wishing for something to fix.

Ardis finally put her coffee cup down one morning and said, “Gordon, I’m tired of watching you sit at that window. We’re going someplace warm.”

So we went. November to May. Home for Mother’s Day, every year.

And every year, somebody had to watch the house.

The first four winters, it was Vern, with a neighbor boy to do the shoveling.

Then Brett’s marriage ended.

He moved into a little apartment over the old bakery on Main Street. Two rooms and a hot plate. And that fall, Ardis said, “Why should Brett be paying rent on that little place when our house sits empty half the year?”

I said that was a good point.

I also said it wasn’t how I would have done it.

We worked it out between us. Brett kept his apartment. He’d stop at the house every couple of days. Run the faucets on the north wall when it went below zero, so the pipes wouldn’t freeze. Check the furnace filter. Keep the walks shoveled for the mail carrier.

In return, he could park his truck in our garage during the bad weeks.

That was the whole deal. I wrote it down on an index card and stuck it on the refrigerator with a magnet, in my own handwriting.

I’m a man who likes things written down on index cards.

Ardis came back from the pool around four o’clock that afternoon. She had a towel around her neck and her library book tucked under her arm.

She read my face from all the way across the gravel lot. Forty-two years of marriage will do that.

“Is it Brett?” she said.

“How did you know?”

“Because you only look like that about Brett.”