The Christmas Checks That Never Came

“A thank-you card,” I said.

Owen looked up. He is eight, and he has started noticing when grown-ups are choosing their words. “Thank you for what?” he asked.

I had thought about this part for a week. I would not lie to my children, and I would not make them carry something that belonged to the grown-ups.

So I told them what was true and stopped there.

“Great-Grandma has been sending you each Christmas money every year,” I said. “For four years. And it never got to you. So she never heard you say thank you.”

“Where did it go?” Owen said.

“That’s something for the grown-ups to sort out,” I said. “What I want you to do is thank her for thinking of you. Because she did think of you. Every single year.”

“Can I write a letter instead of a card?” he asked. “Cards are for little kids.”

“A letter is perfect,” I said.

I did not tell them what to write. I want that on the record. I put the kettle on and wiped down the counter and let them work, and I only looked when they were done.

Lily folded a piece of white paper in half and drew a Christmas tree on the front, green with every color of ornament she owned a marker for, and a yellow star at the top that took her four tries.

She wrote the inside herself, with her tongue poking out the corner of her mouth, and she sounded out the long words under her breath.

When she was done she handed it to me to check the spelling.

I opened it. In big five-year-old letters, it said: Thank you for the Christmas money. We never got it but thank you for sending it. Love, Lily.

I stood there at the counter holding it, and I did not correct one word.

“Is it good?” she asked.

“It’s perfect,” I said, and I had to turn around and check the kettle.

Owen wrote his letter on lined paper from his school folder. He wrote it slowly and crossed out two things and started over once.

When he was finished he folded it in thirds, like a real letter, and asked for an envelope.

The only one left in the box that would fit it was a red one, from a pack of Christmas cards that had come in red and green.

He wrote “Great-Grandma Ruth” on the front in his best printing and licked it shut before I could read it.

“It’s private,” he said. “It’s for her.”

“Okay,” I said. “Then it’s for her.”

Christmas Day we went to Darlene and Tom’s for dinner at noon, the way we had every year since Nick and I were married.

Their house was a small ranch on Fourth Street with the same plastic candles in the windows it had always had.

It smelled like ham and coffee and the cinnamon rolls Darlene makes from her mother’s recipe.

Tom was in his chair by the window in his good flannel shirt, and he got up slow to hug the kids. He always gets up. Even with the stents, he gets up.

We ate at one o’clock. Ham, scalloped potatoes, green bean hotdish, the cranberry salad with the walnuts in it, and rolls.

Tom said grace, short, the way he always does. Nick sat beside me with his knee touching mine under the table.

Darlene passed the ham. She asked the kids what Santa brought.