The Envelope in the School Lot

“I took it a little at a time,” he said. “Twenty here. Forty. I told myself I’d put it back when the unemployment came through. Then I told myself I’d put it back when I found something. Then it was gone, and I couldn’t look at the can.”

“Did you ever think about telling him?”

He shook his head. “I couldn’t. I’d look at him and I couldn’t. And then he quit asking about it, and I let him quit asking. That’s the worst part, Mari. I let my boy stop asking me.”

I did not tell him it was all right, because it was not all right.

I did not tell him he was a terrible father either, because he was not, not for most of fifteen years. He was a man who had done a terrible thing.

“He’s going to march in that parade,” I said. “He’s going to play on that stage. He’s going to come home and tell you all about it, because he loves you. What you do between now and then is up to you.”

Sorley rubbed his face with both hands. “What do I do?”

“Start by not going out to the county road this afternoon,” I said. “That would be a good start.”

He laughed, kind of, but it wasn’t really a laugh. Then he stood up and offered me his hand and pulled me up off the curb the way he used to pull me out of the deep end of the pool, and he walked me to my car.

“I’ll pay you back,” he said, at my car door.

“I didn’t do it to be paid back,” I said. “Pay him back. That’s who you owe.”

The band was gone five days. Teague called me from the airport in Detroit before they boarded, so excited he forgot to say hello. He had never been on an airplane before.

“Aunt Mari, the seats are so little,” he said. “Mr. Fadness says the window’s mine the whole way down because I’m the only one who’s never flown. Did Dad say anything?”

“He saw you,” I said. “He saw you in the window with your trombone. He’ll tell you himself.”

Then they called his row and he had to go.

He sent me pictures every night. The band in their maroon uniforms lined up on a street with a castle at the end of it.

The trombones in a row with their slides all pointed the same way. Teague with a sunburned nose holding an ice cream bar shaped like a mouse.

On the third day he sent me a short video from one of the other mothers.

You could hear the drumline first, then the whole band, and then they came marching down that street in the bright sun with the crowd lined up three deep on both sides.

I found him in the second row of trombones. Red hair under the plumed hat, chin up, slide going out and back in perfect time with every boy in his section.

He did not miss one step. I watched it nine times on my lunch break.

I showed it to Mrs. Kessinger over the fence that evening, while it was still light. She held my phone up close to her glasses and watched the whole thing and then handed it back.