The Breakfast I Carried at Seven

I wrote that down too. “Day 6. Clint found the thermostat stuck at 60. Fixed it. Ivo had been sleeping in his barn coat. Two frozen dinners on the counter again, neither opened.”

My kids got into it, the way kids do when something good is happening. Tessa started drawing Ivo pictures of horses, which he taped to his refrigerator.

Owen asked if he could come on Saturdays, and Ivo taught him to play checkers and beat him eleven games straight.

“You have to let him win one,” I whispered to Ivo once, in the kitchen.

“No ma’am,” Ivo said. “He’ll win one when he wins one. That’s how you know it counts.”

Owen won his first game on the third Saturday and ran across the yard yelling about it, and Ivo sat back in his chair grinning like a man who had won it himself.

People noticed. Our road has six houses on it in three miles, and everybody knows whose truck is where.

Wyman Pruitt, who runs a few cows on the place past ours, started stopping by in the afternoons with a newspaper. He would leave it on the porch and knock twice and go.

Bertie Tate from our church found out somehow, the way church ladies do, and started bringing a pot of soup on Wednesdays.

She did not make a fuss. She left it on the stove with a note that said “Heat on medium, stir,” and went home.

Nobody said a word against Joelle. I want that to be clear. Nobody at church, nobody on the road.

I never said a word against her either, not to Wyman, not to Bertie, not to anybody at the hospital.

When people asked, I said Ivo needed a little more help these days, and we were all pitching in.

I did try once, with Joelle herself. It was day nine. I was crossing the yard at about six in the evening, on my way to my shift, and her car pulled into Ivo’s drive.

I walked over and waited while she got out with a grocery sack.

“Joelle,” I said, “I’ve been bringing your uncle breakfast in the mornings. I’m glad to. But those frozen dinners, he can’t open the plastic. If you could just peel the film before you leave them, or I could come over and help in the evenings when I’m off.”

She looked at me for a long moment. She looked so tired.

Her eyes were red around the edges and she still had her name tag on from the dental office. She had a second job to get to in forty minutes.

“He’s fine, Mindy,” she said. “He’s stubborn. He could open them if he wanted to. He just likes the company.” She tried to smile. “I appreciate you. I do. But I’ve got it handled.”

And she went inside for ten minutes, and came back out, and drove away.

I wrote it down, word for word, that night on my break.

“Day 9. Spoke with Joelle in the drive at 6:05 PM. Offered to help evenings. She said he could open them if he wanted to. She was inside ten minutes. Left two dinners. Sealed.”