I drove to Conifer before the meeting.
Not for permission. Not for advice. For the kitchen table. The table where Elena had sat with her leather notebook and asked about a nine-year-old's grades while a man waited in a car outside. I needed to see it. I needed to stand in the room where the debt was born and feel the wood under my hands the way I felt the Treeline counter — solid, real, the surface where the truth lived.
My father was in the garage. Under the truck. The same truck. The 180,000-mile truck that had carried me to school and carried lumber to Treeline and carried a man back and forth to payments he couldn't talk about for nineteen years. He slid out when he heard my boots on the concrete.
"I have Elena's notebook," I said. No preamble. The way Cole spoke. The way Roe spoke. The way people speak when the words are too heavy for small talk.
He stood. Wiped his hands on a rag that was older than I was. Followed me inside.
