The Check I Framed Over Her Chair

The check slid across the white tablecloth on the tip of one manicured finger, and Delphine Larrabee kept that finger on it until she was sure I had read the number.

Fifty thousand dollars. Pay to the order of Carly Ashworth. Her signature sat underneath in the neat, looping hand I had seen on yard signs all over Maury County, the hand of a woman who sold houses for a living.

“Every girl has a number,” she said. “I would rather pay it now than watch my son pay it later.”

Then she cut a bite of her ribeye, looked at it on the end of her fork, and set the fork back down without eating it.

I was twenty-seven years old. I had been engaged to her son for five months. I was still in my scrubs from the clinic, with a smear of something on the hem that I prayed she had not noticed.

She had texted me at ten that morning. Would love to take you to lunch, just us girls. I was so pleased I said yes before I thought about it, and I drove up to the steakhouse off I-65 smiling the whole way.

I had pictured her asking about flowers. I had pictured her telling me some story about Emmett as a little boy that I could save and tell at the rehearsal dinner. I had not pictured this.

“Mrs. Larrabee,” I said. My voice came out smaller than I wanted. “I don’t understand.”

“I think you do.” She folded her hands on the table. “It’s a fair amount. It’s more than fair. You can pay off that car, finish whatever school you were thinking about, start over somewhere. Nobody has to be embarrassed. You just decide it isn’t working.”

“It is working,” I said.

“For now.”

The waitress came by with tea refills, and both of us smiled at her like we were talking about the weather. Delphine thanked her by name. She knew the waitress’s name. She knew everybody’s name in that town.

When the girl was gone, I looked at the check again. Two months before the wedding. The invitations were already at my mother’s house in a box, stamped and ready, because my mother does not believe in mailing anything late.

“Does Emmett know you’re doing this?” I asked.

“Of course not.” She said it like I had asked whether the sun came up. “And there’s no reason he ever has to.”

I want to be honest about the next part, because it is the part I am least proud of. For about three seconds, sitting there in my scrubs with fifty thousand dollars in front of me, I did the math. I could not help it.

I made sixteen dollars an hour holding cows still for Dr. Fields and cleaning up after dogs who ate socks. My car had a hundred and ninety thousand miles on it. I had a student loan from two years of a pre-vet program I never finished.

Fifty thousand dollars was more money than I had ever seen written down with my name next to it.

Then I thought about Emmett asleep on my couch with his boots still on after a twenty-hour shift, and the three seconds were over.

“I know about Kristen,” I said.