The Bus Driver Who Bought Her House

I thanked her. I went home and sat in the kitchen and thought about Dale’s Buick at the curb and the way he’d looked at the empty hooks.

I still had the house to buy. Knowing he was hurting didn’t change that. But it changed how I thought about what he’d said on my porch. A man who is drowning will sometimes push down on the nearest thing.

Back on that Monday of the money, the appraiser had come out again, looked at the gutter and the windows, and signed off. On day twenty four, Pam called and said the title was clear. On day twenty six, a Friday, underwriting gave final approval.

“Clear to close,” Pam said on the phone. “Day twenty nine, one o’clock, at the title office. Bring your driver’s license and a cashier’s check for your funds to close. I’ll send you the exact number.”

I said thank you about six times. She laughed and said, “You did all the work. I just pushed paper.”

“You slid me the candy jar,” I said.

There was a pause on the line. “You remember that?”

“I’ll remember it a long time,” I said.

That night I went into the pantry with a flashlight and looked at the marks. Tyler at four. Morgan in purple. Jess’s little cluster from the summer she was nine.

I’d been making myself not look at that door frame for a month. I let myself look at it then.

On the morning of day twenty nine I drove my morning route. I had asked for a sub for the afternoon. I kept glancing in the big mirror over the windshield at forty one kids who had no idea, and that was just fine with me.

At the bank I got the cashier’s check for my funds to close. Then at one o’clock I sat at the long table in the old bank building with Kim, and I signed my name more times than I have signed it in my whole life.

Dale had come in on day twenty six and signed his side of everything, Kim said. He’d asked that his proceeds be made out as a cashier’s check, because the memory care office wanted certified funds to clear a balance that had been running behind.

When we were done, Kim slid a set of keys across the table that I’d already had for eighteen years, and an envelope.

“This is Dale’s check,” she said. “He asked me to mail it. But he lives out on the east end, by the elevator road. Isn’t that on your route?”

“It is,” I said.

“Would you mind running it out to him?” she said. “I called him. He said that’s fine.”

I looked at the envelope a long time. “I don’t mind,” I said.

I didn’t tell my kids. I want to be clear about that. I texted them that the loan had closed and that I loved them. That was all.

But Jess had told Tyler, and Tyler had called Morgan, and Morgan had already been driving home from Lincoln since noon. When I pulled into the drive at home to change out of my good blouse, the three of them were sitting on the porch steps waiting for me.

“Where are you going?” Tyler said.

“To take Dale his check.”

Morgan stood up. “We’re coming.”

“You don’t need to,” I said.

“We know,” Jess said.