Fifteen hundred dollars a month, for the two of us.

That was our pay. For running twelve hundred acres of corn and soybeans in Lyon County, Minnesota. For planting and spraying and combining and hauling and fixing every broken thing on the place. For checking bins at two in the morning in a blizzard. For calving the forty head of cows Vern kept because he liked looking at them.

Eighteen thousand dollars a year. Both of us.

No raise. Not once.

I know the number because I keep the farm books.

Have for ten years. I took a bookkeeping course at the community college in Marshall the winter after we got married, because Judy’s eyes were going and she couldn’t see the numbers anymore. I took over the farm accounts in March of that year and I’ve done them every month since.

Every check. Every invoice. Every grain ticket. Every payment to the bank in Marshall and the co-op and the seed dealer. I’ve written them all. I’ve balanced them all.

So I know exactly what twelve hundred acres brings in on a good year. And exactly what goes out.

And exactly what came to Nate and me. Fifteen hundred a month.

There was no contract. Only family pay on a handshake.

Vern and Nate shook on it in the shop, the week before our wedding. Fifteen hundred a month and the trailer and the electric. And someday, Vern said, the land would come to Nate anyway. So it all came out in the wash.

Someday. Nobody ever said when.

And we were never going to sue Nate’s parents. We talked about it once, lying in bed in that cold back bedroom. Nate said no before I even finished the sentence.

“I’m not taking my dad to court, Holly,” he said. “Not ever.”

All we could do was stop working for nothing.

Chapter Two: Five Hundred Dollars

In March, I asked Vern for five hundred dollars more a month.

I didn’t ask Nate to do it. He would have, but I knew how it would go. Nate and his dad don’t talk about money. They talk about weather and seed and the price of diesel and whether the Vikings will ever win a Super Bowl. Money makes them both go quiet.

So I did it. I’m the bookkeeper. Money’s my job.