The Rent Book in the Frame

The kitchen table

When we came back in, the party had thinned. People were finding reasons to go: babysitters, the ball game, early church in the morning.

They hugged Kayla at the door and patted Cody on the arm, and they didn’t quite look at Mom.

Mom was sitting by herself at the new kitchen table with her paper plate in front of her and the cake on it not touched.

She’d been crying. Kayla’s mother had brought her a glass of water and a paper napkin.

I sat down across from her. I had the jar in my lap, with Cody’s four hundred dollars in it, and his note folded in my pocket.

“I’m not going to stop loving you, Mom,” I said. “I want you to hear that. But you hurt me. You looked me in the face and lied to me eighty-four times.”

“I know it,” she said. She couldn’t look at me. She was folding the napkin into smaller and smaller squares. “I know I did. I wrote every one of them down.”

“Every month I would write house jar,” she said, “and I’d think, I’ll fix it, I’ll fix it before she ever finds out. And then I’d put the book back in the cupboard. And then it was the first of the month again.”

Cody came and stood in the kitchen doorway. He didn’t come any closer. He looked at our mother for a long time.

“I love you, Mom,” he said. “But I’m paying Megan back, and you’re not going to talk me out of it. And I don’t want another dollar from you that isn’t yours to give.”

Mom nodded. She put her face in her hands and nodded into them. Cody stood there a minute more, and then he went out to help Kayla’s dad carry the folding chairs back to the truck.

The porch

Kayla found me out on the front porch afterward. She was holding the frame flat against her chest, over the baby, like it was something she was protecting.

“Megan,” she said. “I didn’t know either. I need you to believe me. I would never have let him take it. I’d have stayed in that rental by the railroad tracks another ten years.”

“I believe you,” I said. “I do, Kayla.”

She was quiet a minute. The streetlights were coming on one at a time down that new street, and you could hear somebody’s dog barking a few houses down, and the balloons on the mailbox bumping in the wind.

“Cody and I have been talking about godparents,” she said. “We hadn’t decided. But I just did.” She took my hand and laid it flat on her belly.

“Will you be her godmother? I want our girl to know an aunt who would do what you did and never even raise her voice.”

The baby kicked right then, under my palm. I’m not making that up. Right against my hand. I said yes before Kayla even finished asking.