I was standing at the kitchen sink with the window open when I heard the back door creak open. It was past eleven and I knew exactly what that sound meant. Daddy was heading out to the north field again.

I grabbed the flashlight from the drawer and went after him. The grass was wet and I could see his boot prints leading toward the creek bed. He was sitting on the bank when I found him, just looking at the water like he was waiting for somebody.

“Daddy, it is late,” I said. “We need to get you back inside before you catch cold.”

He looked up at me and gave a small smile. “Your mother used to come find me out here too,” he said.

That was the first fall last month. I helped him stand and we walked back slow. His hand felt cold and thin in mine. Back in the house I made him tea and sat with him until he dozed off in his chair.

The farm has been in the family since 1961. Mama and Daddy bought it right after they married and they worked every acre together. I still remember sitting on the porch after supper while Daddy told stories about clearing the land. Mama would laugh and say the tomatoes were the only reason they stayed some years. Her tomato cages are still out in the garden, rusting but standing exactly where she left them.

The next morning I called my brother Tom. He lives two hours away but he had already spoken to the memory care place in Richfield.

“You need to sign those papers,” Tom said. “That room will not stay open and Daddy cannot keep doing this every night.”

I told him the price. Eight thousand four hundred dollars every month.

Tom said we could sell off the north forty acres first if we had to, but the whole place would probably have to go in the end.

My sister Linda called that same afternoon. She said we should wait and see if we could manage with more help here at home.

“He has been on that land his whole life,” Linda said. “It would break him to leave it.”

I did not know who to listen to. Daddy was not saying much those days anyway. He just walked the fields when he could and sat by the window the rest of the time.

A few nights later he fell again, this time by the fence line. I found him sitting in the dirt with one hand on the post. He had a cut on his arm but he did not seem to notice it.

“I am sorry to be so much trouble,” he said when I got him on his feet.

“You are not any trouble,” I told him. But I was already thinking about the papers sitting on the kitchen table.