Inside was a letter Dad had written shortly before his death.
The farm carried $388,000 in debt. Dad had deliberately left it to Phil because he believed I would sacrifice my entire future trying to save it.
But the final lines of that letter broke me.
“You were the best help a man ever had. I should have told you while I still had the chance.”
And when I showed the letter to my brother, he pulled another folded document from his pocket.
What he’d secretly planned to do with the inheritance changed everything between us.
—
The attorney stopped reading.
I waited for him to continue.
He didn’t.
My name is Wade Kucera. I was fifty-one when my father died, and for twenty-two years, I’d worked alongside him on our family’s Nebraska farm.
I’d planted corn in the spring, repaired machinery in winter, moved cattle through blizzards, and spent more mornings behind a tractor wheel than I could count.
