The Payment Book I Mailed My Best Friend

I put the book in a manila envelope. I wrote Lori’s name and her address on Elm Street on the front, in my plain handwriting, and no return address, because she would know.

I did not put a note in. The book was the note.

Tuesday morning, before my shift, I drove it to the post office myself. I stood at the blue box out front for a full minute with the envelope half in the slot.

Then I let go.

Nothing happened Wednesday. Nothing Thursday. Nothing the whole next week.

Lori didn’t call. She didn’t text. She wasn’t at Mass the next Sunday, which she had not missed in two years except for the flu.

I told myself she had not gotten it yet. Then I told myself she had gotten it and thrown it in the trash. Then I told myself I had finally done it, I had finally lost her, and over money.

Some nights I lay awake and thought I should drive over to Elm Street and say I was sorry. That I had been wrong. That she could keep it and we could forget the whole thing.

Steve caught me with the car keys one evening, standing at the back door in my slippers.

“Deb,” he said quietly. “Give it time. You said your piece. Now let her say hers.”

I put the keys back on the hook. He was right, and I hated that he was right.

On the twelfth day, a Friday in early May, I got off my shift at three and drove home with the windows down. The lilacs along our lane had just opened, and the whole yard smelled like them.

I was still in my pink scrub top with my black cardigan over it, my brown hair pulled back in a ponytail I wear at work. I had just set my purse on the counter and started the coffeemaker when I heard tires on our gravel.

I looked out the kitchen window, and my heart went up into my throat.

Kenzie was behind the wheel. Lori was in the passenger seat beside her, staring straight ahead through the windshield like she was waiting to be called in for a shot.

Kenzie got out first. She had her long dark hair loose down her back, and she was wearing a gray hoodie with the sleeves pulled down over her hands, the way she used to as a little girl when she was nervous. In one hand she was holding something small and white.

She walked around and opened her mother’s door. She stood there and waited. It took Lori a long moment to get out.

I had the back door open before they reached the steps. I did not know what to say, so I said what I always say.

“Coffee’s on.”

Kenzie came in first. She hugged me hard and quick, the way she does, and then stepped back. Lori came in behind her, in a faded denim jacket I had seen a thousand times, and she did not hug me.

She walked past me to the kitchen table and sat down in the chair at the end she has always sat in, and she put both hands flat on the table and looked at them.

Her hair was shorter than I had ever seen it. She had it cut short and frosted, and up close I could see how thin she had gotten in the face.