"It's snowing."
"Dad."
"I've got the heifers in. I've got wood. I've got the generator if the power goes, and the lamps, and I've got two weeks of groceries because Lafe's wife made me buy them Saturday." He heard a faint breath on the line, someone else listening, and said, a little louder, "And Mrs. Haumann can tell you I've got plenty of canned peaches, because she was standing behind me at the register."
There was a muffled sound and a click.
Kirsten laughed, a short, tired laugh, and for a second she sounded like her mother. Then she said, "Did you think any more about what I said? At Christmas?"
He looked at the window. The yard light swung.
"I'm not having this conversation on the party line."
"You never have it anywhere. Not on the party line, not at Christmas." She was thirty-four and had her mother's way of getting to the point and his way of not letting go of it. "There's a lot of people selling, Dad. There's no shame in it. Ardell Fenske told you himself, you could go now and walk away with something. If you wait—"
"Ardell Fenske can tell me what he likes."