Sixty Plates and One End Slice

Why I Didn’t Fight

People asked me afterward why I did not hire a lawyer. The answer was simple.

The cafe was in Mom’s name, not mine, and Lacey had the bank card because Mom gave it to her.

I also knew my sister was behind on her house. Her neighbor at church had said something in October about a letter from the bank, and Lacey had changed the subject so fast it made a breeze.

And Mom was sitting in a wheelchair in a building at the edge of town, worrying about pie crust.

I was not going to put her in the middle of a lawsuit between her daughters. A new job was faster than any lawyer.

Steve took it harder than I did. He came home at noon that first day and found me sitting at the kitchen table with my coat still on, and he stood in the doorway in his county jacket and listened to the whole thing.

“You want me to go talk to her?” he said. “I don’t mind. I’ll be polite. I’ll just ask her how she figures sixteen years is worth one text.”

“No,” I said. “If you go, it’s a fight. If it’s a fight, it’s all over town by supper, and Mom hears it from one of the aides by breakfast.”

He sat down across from me. Steve is not a talker. He fixes things, and I could see what it cost him that there was nothing here for him to fix.

“Then what do you want to do?” he asked. “We’ll be fine on my check for a while. Fourteen an hour wasn’t making us rich anyway. Nate’s out of school. The truck’s paid off. You don’t have to rush.”

“I know I don’t,” I said. “But I can’t sit in this house. I’ve been at that grill at five in the morning since Nate was nine. I don’t know what to do with my hands.”