The Pan of Bars on Nicole’s Porch
Then she went with Kyle to the credit union in Monroe and sat at the loan officer’s desk until they agreed to refinance the rest.
She did not tell me that. Kyle did, at the hardware store, in the aisle with the snow shovels. He shook my hand and couldn’t say anything else.
Shane, to his credit, did not fight her on any of it. He took the money and released the note to the credit union. And in March he called and asked, plainly, if he could have Brody on Tuesday nights too, for supper and homework, because Brody was struggling with fractions and Shane was always good at math.
I said yes. That is the kind of thing you say yes to when somebody asks.
Now I have to tell you about the girls, because that is the part that makes me cry, and it was happening the whole time and none of us knew.
Kenzie and Nicole’s daughter, Hailey, are best friends. Of course they are. They were born four months apart. They had their first sleepover at my house when they were three and both wet my couch.
When the hearing happened, Nicole and I stopped talking. We did not say it. We just stopped. And I thought, I had assumed, the girls had stopped too, because nobody wanted them in it.
On the Tuesday after we sat in Pastor Dan’s office, I was cleaning out Kenzie’s coat pockets for the wash, and I found a note folded into a little square, the way girls fold them. The way Nicole and I used to fold them.
I should not have opened it. I opened it.
It was in Hailey’s handwriting. It said: My mom cries in the car every day. I think she did something bad to your mom. I don’t know what. I’m sorry. Are we still best friends?
And under it, in Kenzie’s handwriting, in purple gel pen: Yes. Whatever our moms did, we are still best friends. Forever. You’re my other girl.
You’re my other girl.
That is what Jean said to me in the church basement the day of Dale’s funeral. I had told Kenzie that story maybe once, years ago, at bedtime. She had remembered it.
I sat on the edge of Kenzie’s bed with that note until she came home from basketball.
“Mom,” she said from the doorway. “Are you reading my stuff?”
“I’m sorry, honey. It was in your pocket. I’m sorry.”
She came and sat next to me. She is twelve, and she is taller than I was at twelve, and she has Shane’s eyes and my stubbornness.
“There’s a bunch more,” she said. “We passed them the whole time. In the lunch line, mostly. You were right there, Mom. You were scooping the corn.”
I put my arm around her. I could not talk.
“Hailey said her mom was really, really sad,” Kenzie said. “And I said you were sad too but you’d fix it. Because you always fix it.”