The Lease for the Room Over the Garage

Sunday morning

I found out later how it went at the house.

They got home from Brandon late Saturday night, after the twins had fallen asleep in the car. Jake carried them in one at a time. Nobody looked at the garage. Why would they? My light was usually off by ten.

Sunday mornings, Jake brought me coffee. That was our thing, from the very first week. Before church, before the twins were up, he’d climb my stairs with two cups and we’d sit by the window for twenty minutes and talk about nothing. The weather. The Twins’ pitching. What his dad would have said about the price of fertilizer.

So at 7:40 that Sunday he went up my stairs with two cups.

He told me the first thing he noticed was the cold, because the space heater was gone. Then the quilt. Then the chair. Then the boxes under the window.

Then the envelope on the bare mattress, with his name on it in his father’s ink.

He set the coffee on the floor and sat down on the bed and read it.

This is what it said. I have it memorized, because I wrote it four times before I got it right.

Jake, honey.

I’m not gone. I’m not mad, or I’m trying not to be, which with me is about the same thing.

I’m at 214 Main Street, over Dale Lindgren’s hardware store. It’s $525 a month and the kitchen is open all day.

I’ll be at daycare Tuesday at three like always, and Thursday too. That doesn’t cost anything. They’re my grandbabies.

The May rent is in the mail slot. I signed a lease, and your dad taught me we keep our word even when it’s a hard word to keep.

I love you. I love Brooke too, even if she doesn’t believe it. I’ll see you in church.

Mom.

Where I was

Where I was that Sunday morning was the third pew on the left at the Lutheran church in Tea, between Sue and Dale, singing “Beautiful Savior” like I’d been doing every Sunday of my life.

I didn’t know if Jake would come. I’d told myself not to look for him. I looked for him anyway, every time the back door moved.

He didn’t come to church. Brooke didn’t either.

But when we came out after, onto the front steps in the sunshine, Jake’s pickup was parked across the street. He was sitting in it. Alone.

He didn’t get out. He just looked at me through the windshield, and I looked at him, and he raised one hand off the steering wheel the way his dad used to wave to the neighbors on the gravel road.

I raised my hand back. Then he drove away.

Sue squeezed my arm. “That’s a start,” she said.

Tuesday

Tuesday at three, I was at the daycare door like I said I’d be.

Emma ran at me so hard she nearly knocked me down. Owen came behind her, carrying a paper plate with macaroni glued to it in the shape of a sun.

“Grandma! It’s for you!”

“Well, look at that,” I said. “That’s the best sun I ever saw.”

I’d thought about this all weekend. I was not going to explain anything to two three-year-olds. Children that age don’t need to carry grown-up trouble. They need snacks and a lap.

So I buckled them in and I took them where I’d always taken them, to the park by the water tower. And then, instead of driving to Prairie Rose Lane, I drove to Main Street.

“Grandma has a new house,” I said. “Over the hardware store. Want to see?”

They thought it was the most exciting thing that ever happened. A house over a store. Owen wanted to know if I could buy hammers whenever I wanted. Emma wanted to know if there were stairs. There were twenty-two of them, and she counted every one.

Dale gave them each a scoop of popcorn from the machine, even though it was a Tuesday.

Upstairs, I made them buttered noodles on the gas stove at four in the afternoon, because I could. They ate at my little table by the front window, kneeling on the chairs to look down at the cars on Main.

Then Owen wandered into the bedroom and came back out with a funny look on his face.

“Grandma,” he said. “That’s your bed.”

“It sure is.”

“Why is your bed at the other house?”

I didn’t have a good answer ready. I said, “Because Grandma lives here now, honey. But I’ll still see you every Tuesday and Thursday. Same as always.”

He thought about that, very serious. Then he went and climbed up on my bed with his shoes on and lay down on my mother’s quilt, and Emma climbed up after him, and the two of them fell asleep there in about four minutes.

I sat in Gary’s recliner and watched them breathe, and I didn’t text anybody, and I didn’t cry, though it was close.