The Mums I Set on Every Porch

The Money On My Rail

Pril came on the third evening, after dark, the way a person comes when they do not want to be seen coming.

I heard her car. I watched from the window. She did not come up to the door.

She stood at the bottom of my porch steps a long time in the cold, an envelope in her hand. I let her stand there, God forgive me, a few seconds longer than I needed to before I opened the door.

“I brought it back,” she said. She held the envelope out. “All of it. A thousand.”

“I took it out of our savings. Gerald does not even know yet. I will tell him.”

“I am telling the youth group Sunday that I made a mistake. The trip will come up the money some other honest way, or it will not go.”

I came down the steps and stood in front of her. She looked older than she had on the corner. She looked like a woman who had not slept.

“I keep telling myself I did it for the children,” she said, and her voice broke on it. “But I did it because I was in charge of that trip, and it was failing, and I could not stand to fail.”

“Your mums were sitting right there in my garage. And I told myself you would not mind, so I would not have to ask you.”

“I did not pray about it, Donna. I said I prayed about it. I did not. I just took them.”

“You were the easiest person in my life to take from, because you have never once told me no. And I used that. That is the truth and it is ugly, and I am saying it to your face.”

That was more honesty than I had expected to get out of Pril in this life. Thirty-one years, and I had never once heard her say plainly that she was wrong about anything.

I did not take the envelope. I reached past it and took her cold hand instead.