The Pancake Money Nobody Could Find

The question I had to ask

I let a long time pass.

I had imagined this conversation, I’ll admit. At night, in bed, I had rehearsed it, and in those rehearsals I said some things I am glad I did not say. None of that was in me now. What I had instead was a small question, and I wanted a true answer.

“Bernice,” I said. “When you looked at me across that table. That first night. What did you see?”

She did not answer right away. I watched her decide not to lie.

“I saw a woman who was by herself,” she said. “Who had lost her husband. Who had a new roof and a bad eye. And I saw the one person I couldn’t ask a hard question of, and I was ashamed of myself for thinking the thing I was thinking, and I covered it up by being careful.” She took a breath. “That’s the truth. I wanted to be sure so badly that I stopped being fair.”

“That’s an honest answer.”

“It’s an ugly one.”

“It’s both,” I said.

Her eyes filled then, and her chin went. She is not a woman who cries in front of people. She just sat there in my kitchen in her good coat with her hands in her lap and breathed in through her nose until it passed.

“I’m not asking you to forgive me,” she said. “I don’t expect it. I only wanted to bring the paper myself, before anyone else could. I didn’t want you to hear it from Weldon or from Nadine. I wanted to be the one to put it on your table.”

I looked at her for a good while.

So I got up, and I got the coffee pot, and I poured her a fresh cup because hers had gone cold.

“Drink that,” I said. “You look terrible.”

She laughed, and it came out wet, and she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand like a girl. And that was how we began again.