The Names Sewn Inside the Collars

The next weekend

I packed their bags that Friday the same as always. Two outfits each, pajamas, church dresses, toothbrushes.

I put in the clothes with the names in them. I didn’t say anything to Travis, and I didn’t say anything to the girls.

When he pulled in, I walked them down to the truck and kissed them each on top of the head.

He said, “Hey, Jess,” and I said, “Hey,” and that was the whole of it.

That Sunday, Brynn came home missing two shirts and her new gray hoodie from Walmart. Callie came home with everything.

I unpacked the bags at the kitchen table and I didn’t say a word.

I washed what was there and I folded it and I put it in their drawers, and I went to bed and lay there looking at the ceiling fan.

I wondered if he had seen the names. I wondered if he had seen them and sold them anyway. I don’t know which one would have been worse.

I couldn’t bring myself to look at Marketplace again that week. I picked up my phone twice on Tuesday night to check, and both times I put it face down on the counter. I didn’t want to know.

The parking lot

Two Sundays after I started sewing, I took the girls to church like always.

We go to the second service at the Methodist church on Elm Street, because Callie can’t do the early one and stay pleasant.

After the service, the girls went downstairs with their Sunday school teacher to finish a craft, a paper plate with cotton balls glued on it for sheep.

I went out to the parking lot to warm up the car.

There was a woman standing at the edge of the lot by the hedge, and when she saw me, she came straight over.

It was Darla Pruitt. She had a daughter in Brynn’s class, and a son who was older.

Darla and I knew each other the way you know people at church in a town like ours.

We’d said hello maybe twenty times in five years. She brought the pumpkin bars to every funeral dinner. That was most of what I knew about her.

She had a plastic grocery sack in her hand, the white kind from the Walmart in Lincoln, tied at the top. She held it out to me with both hands, almost like an offering.

“I think these belong to your girls,” she said quietly.

I untied the sack. On top was Brynn’s gray hoodie from Walmart.

Under that, two of Brynn’s shirts, folded the way I fold them, and under that, Callie’s pink hoodie with the cat on the pocket, her leggings, the kindness shirt with half its glitter gone, Brynn’s second pair of jeans, and two more of Brynn’s shirts from September.

I turned the collar of the top shirt over. Brynn Hale, in purple thread, in my own small backstitch. I checked every piece standing right there by my car.

Every collar I’d sewn was in that sack, and the older pieces too, the ones from before the names. Nine pieces in all.

“I bought them Saturday,” Darla said. “He had a lot of girls’ clothes up on Marketplace, sizes seven and ten, and Kaylee’s a ten, so I sent the man a message and he said he could meet me at the Casey’s.”

“How much did you pay?” I asked. My voice came out flatter than I meant it to.

“Sixty dollars for the whole lot. Nine pieces.” She looked down at her hands.

“I didn’t look close till I was folding them for Kaylee’s drawer that night. And there was Brynn’s name. And then there was Brynn’s name again.”

I opened my purse. I had a little over sixty in there, because I’d been to the bank Friday. I took out three twenties and held them out to her.

She put her hand over mine and pushed it back toward my purse, gentle but not soft.

“Don’t,” she said. “That’s not why I came over.”

“Darla, you’re out sixty dollars. I can’t let you.”

“I won’t keep a child’s name in my house,” she said. “Not one that’s not mine. It wouldn’t be right, and I’d think about it every time I opened that drawer. Put your money away.”

I put it away. I didn’t know what else to do. I stood there holding that sack against my chest like it was something alive.

The girls were still inside with their teacher. Darla looked over at the church door, to be sure, and then back at me, and lowered her voice.

“Jessica, I need to tell you about the man who sold me these,” she said. “And what he said while he counted my money.”