The Business Trip My Husband Faked

Dale called his mother every day that week, from the lake, pretending it was Charlotte. I know because I was there for some of the calls. He would talk loud and cheerful about the hotel and the sessions and the traffic, and Opal would hold the phone and say mm, and uh-huh, and you take care of yourself now, honey, and hang up and look at the ceiling. One time after she hung up she said, to no one, he has got a good imagination, my boy, he always did. And that was all she said about it, then.

Opal died on a Sunday morning, the last Sunday in September, while the bells at First Baptist were going and the grove was just starting to turn. I was with her. Teresa was with her. Della came and sat. Dale was at Lake Blackshear, forty minutes away, telling people he was in North Carolina. He got the call from me a little after ten and he said the right words again, broken up and sorry, and he said he would get on the road from Charlotte right away and it would take him a while. It took him exactly the drive from the lake. He walked into the funeral home that afternoon in clothes that smelled like woodsmoke and fish and he hugged me and I let him, because his mother was dead and I did not have it in me to fight at her coffin.

The funeral was that Wednesday. All of Sawyer came. Opal had been a hard woman to some but a true one to many, and the sanctuary was full, and the flowers ran clear up onto the choir steps. Dale sat in the front pew with his sister Brenda on one side and me on the other, and he cried real tears, and people patted his shoulder, and I watched him accept their comfort and I felt something in me going cold and clear like well water.

Preacher Hollis did the service. He is an old man, slow and plain, not a shouter. He read the Psalm and he spoke about Opal, her figs and her pecans and her sharp tongue and her long faith, and the room laughed and cried in the right places. And then he stopped, and he put his hands flat on the pulpit, and he said, before we go to the grave, Opal left instructions with three of us that she had a letter, and that it was to be read out at her service, in front of everyone, in her own words, and she made us promise. So I am going to keep my promise.

I felt Dale go still beside me. I did not know what was coming. I want you to understand that. I had written it blind, I had sealed it, I had carried it, and I did not know one word of what was in that envelope. I found out the same moment the whole town did.