The Hours The Aide Never Worked

They said yes before I had finished the question. That is the kind of people they are. I should have leaned on them a year before instead of buying a stranger off a price sheet.

Then I made one more call. I called Dawn.

I did not accuse her over the phone. I have learned that when you confront a person on a telephone, they talk themselves loose, and then it is your word against theirs and nothing is ever settled.

I said only that Mother especially wanted her this Sunday, and would she please be sure to come. She said of course, Miss Joan, I will be there. Easy as breathing.

So I knew she would come. And I knew exactly what I would be holding in my two hands when she did.

That Sunday I got up before light. I told my husband where I was going, and he said be careful, and I said it was my mother’s kitchen, not a dark alley, and he said that is not what I meant. And he was right.

I did not pull into the drive, because Dawn would know my car on sight, and I did not want her slowing at the end of the lane and turning around.

So I parked the Buick down the county road, past the Boyces’, behind the old corn crib, and I walked back up the lane in the gray morning cold.

My mother was surprised and glad to see me so early. I told her I missed her and wanted a Sunday breakfast, which was true, and I made us eggs, and I did not tell her the rest. One hard thing at a time.

Then, while she was in the front room with her programs turned up loud, I spread the eleven time sheets across the kitchen table. In order. June at the top, last Sunday at the bottom.

And beside them, each one, I laid the agency’s clock-in log, the record that told the truth. The paper lie and the electronic truth, side by side, down the whole length of the table.

Then I sat down in the chair that faced the back door, the door everyone uses, the door Dawn had a key to, and I waited.

At a quarter past eight I heard gravel in the drive, and the engine cut, and a key in the back lock, the easy careless way a person comes into a place she is certain is empty.

Dawn came in already talking. “Miss Verna, you up? It’s cold out there this morning.”

And then she saw me at the table, and she saw the papers, and she stopped the way you stop when the floor is not where you thought it was going to be.

I did not raise my voice. I said, “Good morning, Dawn. Sit down. I want to show you something.”

She did not sit down. She stood by the counter with her coat still on and her keys still in her hand, and she went white.

I turned the first sheet toward her. “This is the first Sunday in June. It says here you were with my mother from eight until four.”

I laid one finger on the log beside it. “This is the agency’s own record, from their own computer. It says you never clocked in. It says my mother was alone. Were you here, Dawn?”