The extra work began the following week.
I still worked in the hospital's insurance billing department from Monday through Friday.
Most of my day involved correcting claims, answering calls, and explaining to frustrated patients why a bill had not been processed.
I was good at the work.
I was also tired of it by five o'clock.
On Fridays, I drove straight to the highway truck stop.
I changed into my uniform in the staff restroom, tied my apron, and began serving customers before I had time to think about going home.
Truckers came in with dusty boots and tired faces.
Families stopped for coffee.
Farm workers ordered breakfast at hours when most people were asleep.
I learned who wanted extra cream, who complained about the eggs, and who left a few coins beneath the edge of a plate.
I kept every tip.
Even the smallest ones went into a separate envelope at home.
Nate worked longer, too.
He had always been able to repair farm machinery.
He could listen to an engine and often identify the problem before opening the hood.
Farmers trusted him because he didn't pretend to know things he didn't.
If a repair required a part he couldn't find, he said so.
If a job took longer than expected, he stayed until it was finished.
The extra money helped.
It still didn't come quickly.
Some weeks, a farmer paid immediately.
Other weeks, Nate waited until a crop payment arrived.
We learned not to count money before it was in our hands.
At the end of the first month, I sat at our kitchen table with a notebook.
I wrote down the amount in our savings account.
Then I wrote down what we owed for rent, electricity, fuel, food, and insurance.
The numbers were discouraging.
I crossed out a few unnecessary expenses.
Then I crossed out a few more.
We weren't spending extravagantly before, but there were small comforts we had taken for granted.
We stopped buying coffee on the way to work.
We cooked at home.
We repaired clothes instead of replacing them.
When the handle on our old frying pan came loose, Nate fixed it with a screw and a washer.
I laughed when he showed me.
"We've reached the stage where a frying pan gets a second life."
He looked at the pan.
"It still works."
He was right.
We used it for years afterward.
Eggs became a regular part of dinner because they were inexpensive and easy to prepare.
Sometimes I made scrambled eggs with toast.
Sometimes Nate fried them and put them over leftover potatoes.
We learned to make a week's worth of meals from a short grocery list.
I missed eating without thinking about the cost.
I missed buying something simply because I liked it.
But the notebook on our kitchen table became a kind of promise.
Every dollar had a destination.
Every extra shift brought us closer to a place we could call ours.
Nate made another decision that spring.
He sold his fishing boat.
It was an old aluminum boat he had bought before we married.
He used to take it out on quiet mornings when the weather was good.
He would return smelling of lake water, carrying a small cooler and telling me about the fish that had escaped.
I knew how much the boat meant to him.
When he mentioned selling it, I tried to talk him out of it.
"You love that thing."
"I do."
"Then keep it."
He sat at the table with his hands wrapped around a mug.
"I love having a place of our own more."
He sold it to a man from the next county.
The money went into savings.
I watched the buyer tow the boat away.
Nate stood in the driveway until the trailer disappeared around the bend.
I wanted to comfort him, but I didn't know what to say.
So I took his hand.
He squeezed mine.
Then we went inside and checked the notebook.
We didn't tell his parents what we were doing.
We didn't tell Kim, Jeff, or Stacy.
There was no reason to explain our finances to people who had already decided we could manage without assistance.
I also worried that talking about our plans would sound like a request for help.
I couldn't bear the thought of someone handing us another greeting card and calling it encouragement.
So we kept quiet.
At family gatherings, we answered questions about work and the weather.
When Judy asked whether we were comfortable in our rental, I said we were doing fine.
When Ron complained about the rising cost of farm supplies, Nate listened and offered a suggestion about a cheaper supplier.
Nobody asked how much we had saved.
Nobody asked whether we had started looking for a house.
We didn't volunteer the information.
The months passed.
Our savings grew slowly, then a little faster.
I began to recognize the difference between money that came from my regular paycheck and money earned through extra shifts.
The first paid our bills.
The second belonged to the house.
I wrote that rule at the top of the notebook.
HOUSE MONEY ONLY.
Nate followed the same rule with his repair work.
Sometimes he came home after dark with grease under his fingernails and a stiff back.
I would leave a plate of food in the oven.
He would sit at the kitchen table and tell me what had gone wrong with a machine.
I listened while counting the day's tips.
Neither of us complained much.
Complaining didn't make the work disappear.
And we had begun to imagine what our future might look like.
We wanted a small house.
It didn't need to be new.
It didn't need a large kitchen or a finished basement.
We wanted a place where the roof didn't belong to a landlord and the walls could hold shelves we installed ourselves.
Nate wanted enough land to keep a few tools outside.
I wanted a kitchen window that looked onto something other than a parking lot.
We talked about those things while washing dishes.
Sometimes we looked at listings in the newspaper.
Most were beyond our reach.
A house that seemed affordable at first often needed repairs we couldn't pay for.
Another had a monthly payment that would leave us with almost nothing after utilities.
We learned to close the newspaper and move on.
Not every opportunity was ours.
That was a difficult lesson, but it was better than taking on a debt that could swallow us.
By the end of the first year, we had made progress.
We also had less time for ourselves.
I slept late whenever my schedule allowed.
Nate stopped making plans for fishing trips.
We celebrated our wedding anniversary with dinner at home because the restaurant we liked had become too expensive.
He gave me a small potted plant.
I gave him a new set of work gloves.
We both laughed at how practical our gifts had become.
Then he kissed me across the kitchen table.
"One day, we'll have a proper celebration."
"This is proper."
He looked around the little room.
The paint was peeling near the window.
The refrigerator hummed loudly.
Our table had a burn mark from a pan I had once placed directly on the wood.
"This is enough for now," he said.
I knew what he meant.
We were not waiting for life to begin.
We were living it, even while working toward something better.
The following Easter, we visited his parents again.
Judy made ham.
Ron served coffee.
The bluebird card stayed in the kitchen drawer at home.
Nobody mentioned the previous year's gifts.
Kim and Jeff had found a house they liked.
Stacy had started looking at properties farther from town.
Their plans were ordinary conversations, but I noticed that each one had a number attached to it.
A down payment.
A repair estimate.
A monthly payment.
I listened without resentment.
At least, I tried to.
On the way home, Nate asked whether I was all right.
I told him I was.
He waited.
"I'm still disappointed," I admitted. "Not because we didn't get the money. Because they seemed so certain we didn't need anything."
He kept driving.
"I know."
"Do you think they really believe that?"
He took a moment before answering.
"I think they've gotten used to believing it."
That answer stayed with me.
We had become the dependable couple.
The ones who didn't ask.
The ones who found a way.
The label sounded generous until I understood how easily it could become a reason for people to stop looking at us closely.
I didn't want to become bitter.
I didn't want every family dinner to feel like a contest.
I wanted our own home.
And as the second spring approached, that goal was no longer just a picture we carried around in our heads.
We were getting close enough to begin looking seriously.
Then Nate saw an advertisement in the county newspaper.
The county was selling several properties to recover unpaid taxes.
One of them was an old house on the edge of a rural road.
The Miller property.
Nobody had lived there for years.
The photograph showed a sagging porch, a patchy roof, and grass that had grown almost as high as the lower windows.
Most people would have passed it without a second glance.
Nate circled the listing in red ink.
That evening, he placed the newspaper beside our savings notebook.
"We should go look at this one," he said.
Click here to continue reading: PART 3: The Abandoned House Looked Like a Terrible Investment Until My Husband Walked Around the Back and Checked the Foundation
Everyone at the Easter Table Received an Envelope, but Only One Couple Was Told They Needed Nothing
Part 2 of 20
