The envelopes were tucked under the Easter plates. One at every place setting. Each with a name written on it in my mother-in-law’s round schoolteacher handwriting. Kim opened hers first. She’s the oldest.
Divorced two years. Raising two boys in a rented trailer behind the grain elevator. She looked at what was inside the envelope and put her hand flat over her mouth. Then Jeff opened his. He’d been laid off from the Caterpillar plant in the fall. He was driving a propane truck part-time now. He read his, and he looked up at his father, and he couldn’t get…