**Part 2**
Part Eleven: The Text
That night, after Mom went to bed under two quilts in her warm bedroom, I sat at the kitchen table and texted my brothers.
Not Pam. Just Rob and Dean.
Mom’s tank is full. Next October, send the propane money to me. I’ll explain at Easter.
Dean called inside a minute.
“Connie, what happened? Is Mom okay?”
“Mom’s fine,” I said. “She’s warm. She’s asleep.”
“What do you mean, she’s warm?” Dean said. “Was she cold?”
I didn’t answer right away.
“Dean,” I said. “I’ll tell you everything at Easter. Face to face. I don’t want to do it on the phone.”
He was quiet.
“Is it Pam?” he asked.
“At Easter,” I said.
Rob was out feeding cows. He called that night at ten. Rob always calls late.
“Got your text,” he said. “What’s going on?”
“Mom’s warm,” I said. “The tank’s full. It’s on automatic now. In my name.”
Rob didn’t say anything for a long time.
Rob doesn’t say much. He’s the one most like Dad.
“Was she cold?” he asked finally.
“Yes,” I said.
“How cold?”
“Fifty-one degrees in the house,” I said. “She was sleeping in her coat.”
I heard him breathe out. A long, slow breath.
“Okay,” Rob said. “Easter.”
He hung up.
I told them Mom was warm.
The rest would be face to face.
Part Twelve: Pam
Pam called on Thursday.
Five days later. I was at my desk at the school district office in Bismarck, running payroll.
I saw her name on my phone. I almost didn’t answer.
I did.
“The co-op called me,” Pam said. No hello. “They said Mom’s tank was moved off my account.”
“It was,” I said.
“To your name.”
“Yes.”
There was a long silence on the line.
“You went behind my back,” Pam said.
Her voice was shaking. Not with anger. Something else.
“I went to the co-op,” I said.
She didn’t say anything for a long time.
I could hear her breathing. I could hear the clinic phones ringing in the background. Somebody calling her name.
“Pam,” I said. “I found Mom in her coat. In Dad’s chair. The tank was at five percent. It was fifty-one degrees in the house.”
Nothing.
“Pam.”
She hung up.
We didn’t speak for eleven weeks.
Part Thirteen: Eleven Weeks
Those eleven weeks were the hardest of my life.
I want to be honest about that.
I called Mom every night. She was fine. She was warm. The keep-full monitor worked. Duane came out in February and topped off the tank without anyone calling.
“Pam still comes Sundays,” Mom told me in February. “She brings my groceries. She takes me to church.”
“Does she talk about me?” I asked.
Mom was quiet.
“No,” she said.
I thought about it every night.
Lying in bed next to Steve, after he came home from the cold snap. Staring at the ceiling.
I thought about the pink delivery ticket. Two hundred gallons.
I thought about the three of us. Rob and Dean and me. Sending our two-fifty every October. Feeling good about it. Feeling like we’d done our part.
I did the math over and over.
Seven hundred and fifty dollars from the three of us. Two hundred gallons cost four hundred.
Where did the other three-fifty go?
And Pam’s share? Had she ever put in her two-fifty at all?
Steve tried to talk to me about it.
“Have you thought about calling her?” he asked one night in March.
“She hung up on me.”
“That was eight weeks ago.”
“She went behind our back first,” I said. “She took our money and let Mom freeze.”
Steve was quiet for a long time.
“Connie,” he said. “Do you know that’s what happened?”
I opened my mouth. I closed it.
“No,” I said finally. “I don’t know.”
“Then maybe,” Steve said gently, “you ought to find out before Easter.”
I didn’t call her.
I was too angry. Too hurt. Too proud.
I’m the second oldest. Pam’s always been the one in charge. The one who knew best. The one who lived in town and took care of Mom while the rest of us sent money.
I didn’t want to be the one to call.
