I got the box on a Tuesday. Bobby’s widow sent it through the mail without any note of her own, just my name on the label and the green tackle box inside wrapped in an old towel.

I set it on the kitchen table and stared at it for a good ten minutes before I touched the latch.

We used to take that box out every spring when we were boys. Dad would drive us down to the pond before the sun came up and Bobby and I would sit on the bank with our lines in the water. He always let me use the good reel. I don’t even know why I remember that part so clearly but I do.

Dad died in the spring of 1993. The farm was already struggling and the barn roof had started leaking in three different places. I walked around the house for weeks trying to figure out how to pay for the fix without selling off more land. The tractor was still sitting in the shed. It ran fine. Dad had kept it up right until the end.

Bobby had already moved to Michigan by then. He came back for the funeral and we sat on the porch and he told me he was sorry he couldn’t stay to help with the place. Said his job up there needed him. I told him I understood. I did at the time.

The tractor sat for another year. Every time I walked past the shed I thought about how much it would bring. I told myself Bobby didn’t need his half. He had a good job and a house up north. The roof was leaking worse and the hay was getting ruined. So I sold it.

I used the money to hire two guys to put a new roof on the barn. It took them four days and the place stayed dry after that. I never told Bobby. I figured he wouldn’t care much one way or the other.

He found out anyway. Someone from town must have mentioned it because he drove down one weekend without calling first. I heard the car pull in and I knew it was him before I even looked out the window.

He walked straight to the shed. I followed him out there but I stayed by the door. He stood in the middle of the empty space for a long time with his hands in his pockets. Then he turned around and looked at me.

“You could have called,” he said.

That was it. He got back in his car and drove the eight hours home. We didn’t talk after that.