The Forty Miles to Speech Therapy

One afternoon on the way home, with the early afternoon sun coming in across the back seat and the fields bright green on both sides of the road, I was in my purple fleece with the heater going, and I glanced up at the mirror.

She had her picture book open on her lap and she was in the middle of a word, her mouth round, working at it, slow and easy.

She wasn’t squeezing her eyes shut. She wasn’t stamping her foot. She was just doing it, the way Miss Jill showed her, one stretchy sound at a time.

I smiled so hard at that mirror my face hurt. She saw me and smiled back with her mouth still halfway around the word, and she finished it. It was “tractor.” I’ll never forget that.

On the second Tuesday, about 10:45 in the morning, we came around the curve by the conservation area, where the gravel road goes down to the boat ramp.

I saw a white Ram pickup parked by itself at the end of the lot, nose to the water.

I knew the truck. I knew the dent in the tailgate from when Shane backed into a round bale two winters ago. I knew the man sitting in the cab with his phone held up to his face.

Ava was singing to the radio and didn’t see. I didn’t slow down.

I kept both hands on the wheel and my eyes on the road, and I drove on to Chillicothe and sat in that waiting room and didn’t hear a word of the magazine I was holding.

I thought about turning around and tapping on his window. But Ava was in the back seat, and this was not a thing to do with a child in the back seat, or in a gravel parking lot, or in a hurry.

Some things a person ought to say once, quietly, and then let them sit.

That Sunday they came for dinner like always. I made a roast like always.

Shane sat in Dale’s old place at the end of the table, like always, and Ava told him all about the toy box shaped like a barn.

After, Becca took Ava out to see the new barn kittens, and Shane started carrying plates to the sink without being asked, the way he always did. He’s not a lazy man. I want that said too. He never was.

I washed and he dried. I waited until I could hear Ava laughing out by the barn, so I’d know she couldn’t hear us.

“I’m taking Ava to her speech on Tuesdays and Thursdays now,” I said. I kept my voice low and I didn’t look at him. “Miss Jill is real nice. She’d never met her before this month.”

He stopped drying.

“The envelopes are done,” I said. “I’m not going to ask you where they went. You don’t owe me that today.”

“You owe Becca,” I said. “When you’re ready to tell her, I’ll be right here at this table, if either one of you wants me.”

He didn’t say a word. He stood there at my sink and dried the same dinner plate for about two minutes, around and around, until I thought he’d wear the roses off it.

Then he set it down very carefully on the counter and went out to the truck and sat in it.

Becca called me Wednesday night from the Casey’s, on her break.

“He says the insurance thing is a mistake with the co-op office,” she said. “He says he’ll get it straightened out. He says he’s been working on it.”