"Diane, honey, sit down too," Ray said on the screen. "I know you're standing. You always stood up when you were mad."
Diane sat. Owen took the chair nearest the door and held the can in his lap.
Ray set his own can on the kitchen table and opened the green ledger beside it. Gene could hear the refrigerator humming behind him on the recording, the old Kenmore that ran loud in summer.
"Here's how I did it," Ray said. "Every time one of you came home, I kept the receipt. Gas, motel, plane, whatever it was. If you wouldn't give it to me, I looked it up. Five years."
He licked his thumb and turned a page.
"Diane. Seven trips. Gas from Columbus, two lunches at the Blue Bell, one night at the Red Oak Motel when it snowed. Two hundred forty-three dollars and seventeen cents."
Diane's mouth went thin.
"Mark. Two trips. A hundred thirty-eight dollars and forty cents."
Mark stared at the table.
"Lisa. One plane ticket out of Charlotte and a rental car. Six hundred twelve dollars and eighty-nine cents."
Lisa set her coffee down without a sound.
"Gene has a check for each of you," Ray said. "To the penny."
"He's charging us," Mark said, low. "He's sending us a bill for coming to see him."
"Listen," Gene said.
On the screen Ray took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes. "I know what you're thinking, Mark. You're thinking I'm sending you a bill. I'm not. I'm paying you back. Nobody should be out one dime for coming to see their father. You never owed me those miles. So now we're square, and you don't have to carry it around."
He put the glasses back on.
"Everything else goes to Owen Pruitt."
Diane made a small sound. Owen's arms tightened around the can.
"Owen started mowing my yard when he was twelve," Ray said. "I paid him fifteen dollars the first summer. The second summer he wouldn't take it. Said his mom told him not to. So I couldn't write it down. Two hundred and nine Sundays on that porch, and I couldn't write down one of them."
He tapped the ledger with the pencil.
"I don't know what a Sunday is worth. So I'm giving him the house he spent them at. Gene holds it for him till he's twenty-one. The savings go to his schooling. The Buick is his when he gets his license, and Gene, you check his oil."
Gene heard himself breathe out through his nose. Ray had picked the Buick on purpose. He had been forty years teaching Gene to check his own oil.
"Now the part that isn't money," Ray said.
He turned the ledger over and laid his hand flat on it.
"Diane. You're going to say I only ever asked if you needed anything. You're right. I did that. I meant stay for supper. I never could get it out right. That's on me, not you."
Diane looked at the window. Her hand went to the dry cleaner's tag in her sleeve and worried it.
"The house is the boy's," Ray said. "But he and I talked about it. There's a key under the third flowerpot. There's a chair on that porch every Sunday, for any one of you, for as long as he's got it. He'll set a place. Nobody's keeping score anymore. I'm done with the ledger."
He looked straight at the camera, past it, at the man who had held the phone.
"Gene. You owe me eleven games of checkers. Pay the boy."
The screen went dark.
The radiator knocked twice. Then it stopped.
Owen got up. He crossed the room and set the red can on the table in front of Diane, very carefully, like it might spill.
"He said give it to you," Owen said. "After."
Diane pried off the plastic lid. The can was full of receipts, folded small, soft as cloth. She took out the top one. Gas, thirty-four dollars and six cents, a Marathon on Route 33. The Thanksgiving before last.
She turned it over.
On the back, in carpenter's pencil, in Ray's square machinist's printing: Diane came. Stayed 3 hrs. Brought the pie. Good day.
She did not read it aloud. She set it down and took out the next one. Then the next. Each had pencil on the back. Mark reached in and found his truck stop receipt from Richmond. Mark here. We watched the Browns lose. He laughed at my jokes.
Lisa's was a boarding pass, creased down the middle. Lisa flew all this way. Calls every Sunday at 7.
Lisa put her hand over her mouth.
Gene looked away from them, out the window, where the wind was moving the last leaves down Main Street. So that was what the ledger had been for. Not a bill. A count of the days that went right.
He opened his desk drawer, slipped the rubber band off the green ledger, and laid it on the table for them. He did not open it. That part was theirs.
At 11:41 Diane cleared her throat.
"The man in Columbus," she said. "If I called him."
"You can," Gene said. "I'll send him everything. Ray signed in March, with two witnesses and a letter from Dr. Amsel saying his mind was sharp. I made sure of it, because he asked me to." He folded his hands. "But I'd ask you to drive by the house first."
Diane looked at the three checks on the table, then at the receipts, then at Owen, who had gone back to his chair by the door and was studying his shoes.
"Did he eat?" she asked. "On Sundays. Did he actually eat?"
"Ham salad," Owen said. "On Saturdays my mom made it. He liked the sweet pickles in it. He said it was like yours, Mrs. Hale. He said you put too much pickle and he liked it that way."
Diane picked up her check, folded it once, and put it in her coat pocket.
Mark had his phone out again. Gene watched him dial.
"Brenda, it's Mark Kovach. Don't come at noon." He paused. "No. Nothing's for sale."
The clock said 11:52.
The next Sunday was cold and bright, and Owen was mowing anyway, one last pass before winter. The cut grass smelled sharp and green, and the old Toro coughed every time it hit a slope.
Gene climbed the porch steps slowly, his knee complaining, a checkerboard under his arm. Owen had set out four lawn chairs, the way Ray had told him. He shut off the mower and came up wiping his hands on his jeans.
"Eleven games," Owen said.
"I know the number."
They set the board on the upturned bucket. Owen was red. Gene was black. On the third move a gray Lexus slowed out front and stopped.
Diane came up the walk with a foil-covered bowl. She did not say she was staying. She looked at the four chairs and sat in the one nearest the steps, the one Owen had pulled into the sun.
"Too much pickle," she said, and set the bowl on the rail.
Gene jumped two of Owen's men, reached for his shirt pocket out of old habit, and found no pencil there. He let his hand drop and took his turn.