The Envelope Under the Casserole Dish

That’s not a lot of money for a woman living alone, if you’ve done anyone’s grocery shopping lately.

Coffee alone is twelve dollars a can now. But it was all there, every penny of it, with the store name across the top.

And on the back of the ones where she’d asked for cash, my pencil. Forty dollars, Feb. 9.

Sixty dollars, Mar. 2. Twenty dollars, Mar. 23. Every one dated, every one in the same small square handwriting.

I added those up, too. One thousand, three hundred and sixty dollars in cash, handed to Evelyn Hagen at her own kitchen table over two years.

Every bit of it out of her own account, at her own request.

I sat there looking at that number a long time. Thirteen hundred and sixty dollars, and she said it kept going missing out of her purse.

I believed her that it was missing. I just knew I hadn’t taken it.

Which meant it was somewhere. Or it had gone somewhere. And the woman who used to know where every jar of pickles in her basement was had no idea where.

I was not angry anymore by then. I was scared for her.

And I’ll tell you the truth, I was scared for me, too, because I knew what was coming for all of us if this was what I thought it was.

I put the receipts back in order, oldest on the bottom, and I slid them into a plain white envelope from the church office.

I wrote nothing on the front. Then I got out a sheet of my plain notepaper.

I wrote a note to go on top. It took me four tries. The first three were too long and too sure of themselves.

The fourth one was short, and I could read it without crying, so that’s the one I kept.

I folded it once and put it right inside the flap where she’d see it first. Then I sealed nothing.

I wanted her to be able to open it with her shaky hands and not have to fight with it.

I didn’t bring those receipts to win anything. I want to be clear about that. I could have dumped them on the table and said, there, now who’s a thief.

That’s not who I want to be, and it’s not who she raised her son to marry.

I brought them so that Evelyn would not have to open the truth alone, with her friends beside her instead of whispering about her. I did not bring them to shame her.

Tuesday afternoon I made her favorite supper. Scalloped potatoes and ham, the way she taught me, with the onions sliced thin and a little dry mustard in the cream sauce. I baked it in her own blue casserole dish.

I wrapped the dish in a dish towel to keep it hot. I put on my patterned cardigan and pulled my hair back in a ponytail.

Then I tucked the envelope under the dish so the corner just showed past the towel.

The Tuesday study meets in the basement of St. Olaf’s at three thirty, and it usually runs until about a quarter to five.

Pastor Ann comes down at the end, most weeks, to close them in prayer.

I knew Evelyn would be there. She had not missed a Tuesday since Walt died. Marlene picks her up in her Buick, because Evelyn stopped driving after the snow last winter.