Chapter 10 - Arlin’s Confession
That night, the house was quiet.
Callie was fast asleep in her cedar bed, clutching her stuffed rabbit. Aaron was sitting at the kitchen table, bandaging a cut on my forearm from when I had braced against the door during the collision.
The front porch boards creaked.
Aaron instantly reached for the flashlight, but a weak, rasping knock at the screen door stopped him.
"Crystal?" a voice called out. It was a voice that had once boomed across three hundred acres of cattle pens, but now sounded thin, brittle, and cracked like dried clay. "It’s your father."
Aaron looked at me. I gave a slow nod.
He unlatched the door and stepped back.
Arlin Eubanks stood on our threshold. He wasn't wearing his fancy leather boots or his silver-buckled belt. He was wearing an old, stained work jacket, his eyes sunken and gray, his shoulders slumped as if the entire weight of Logan County was pressing down on his neck.
"Come in, Arlin," I said, not offering him a chair.
He stepped inside, took off his hat, and held it with both hands against his stomach. He looked around our modest, warm kitchen—at Callie’s drawings, at the polished wood counters, at the simple dinner plates drying in the rack.
"She’s in the county lockup," Arlin said, his voice barely above a whisper. "Judge denied bail. Attempted assault with a deadly weapon, vehicular endangerment, and the grand jury handed down six indictments for grand larceny from my accounts."
"I know," I said.
Arlin swallowed hard. "The boys... Mason and Hunter... the state put them in emergency foster care down in Norman until their father’s people can be vetted."
"That's probably the best thing that ever happened to those boys," Aaron said bluntly from the counter. "Maybe someone will teach them how not to be predators."
Arlin didn't argue. He just lowered his head further.
"I was blind, Crystal," the old man said, tears finally welling in his red-rimmed eyes, spilling down into the deep crevices of his cheeks. "I was so proud of having a family that bowed to me that I let her poison everything. I let her tell me you were the traitor because you wanted your own name on your own work."
"You let her do it because it was easy, Arlin," I replied, feeling no satisfaction, only a profound, hollow exhaustion. "You liked having someone flatter your vanity while I made you face the truth."
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a worn leather ledger—the original farm journal that had belonged to my grandfather, the one that recorded the original land grants from the 1889 land run.
He set it gently on the edge of the kitchen table.
"Everything's in there," Arlin said, his hands trembling. "The south pasture, the timber rights, the old homestead house up on the ridge. I went to the bank this afternoon before they closed the doors. I signed over the full deed to you and Callie. Unencumbered. No liens."
I looked at the ledger, then at the broken man standing before me.
"Why?" I asked.
"Because if I leave it to anyone else, it'll end up in the hands of lawyers or thieves," Arlin choked out, burying his face in his rough, calloused hands. "You're the only one who ever loved this dirt enough to fight for it. You're the only Eubanks left who knows how to make something that lasts."
He turned toward the door, his boots dragging heavily across the linoleum.
"Arlin," I called out softly before he touched the screen.
He stopped, his back to me, his shoulders trembling.
May you like
"When the sunflowers bloom," I said, "you can come down the driveway and look at them. From the fence line."
He didn't turn around. He just gave one slow, trembling nod, pushed open the screen, and walked out into the cold Oklahoma dark.
