It was the coffee can.
A red Maxwell House can full of pennies, nickels, dimes, and a few folded bills, the kind of money people stopped noticing until they had none left.
He held it with both hands while Daryl Pike stood in the doorway behind him, one palm on the frame, shoulders taking up all the light from the kitchen.
“Don’t drag this out,” Daryl said.
The porch boards gave under Eli’s weight. It was late October in Roaring Gap, Montana, the kind of cold that came early and stayed mean. The yard was silver with frost. The cottonwoods along the creek looked like stripped bones.
Eli set the coffee can beside his duffel and turned back toward the man who had married his mother when Eli was eleven and had been slowly hardening into something else ever since.
“She wouldn’t’ve done this,” Eli said.
