The Money Orders That Kept Mom Home

The answer I gave myself in the car

I found Rayanne by the walk-in cooler. She’s been my second on the line for six years and she can run that kitchen in her sleep.

“I’ve got to go to my mother’s,” I said. “Can you take breakfast and lunch?”

She looked at my face and didn’t ask one question. “Go on,” she said. “We’ve got it.”

I didn’t even change out of my work clothes. I had on my maroon cafeteria polo and my jeans and my hair pulled back in a ponytail, and I walked out to the parking lot with the hairnet still in my hand.

I sat in the car a minute before I started it.

I’ll be honest. The first thing I thought of was the sheriff. Taking an old woman’s rent money and keeping it is stealing, plain as day, and I knew there were people whose job it was to deal with that.

But I also knew how that goes. A report, a deputy, a phone call back in a week, maybe two. Clint saying she gave him the money as a gift. Mom having to sit at her table and answer questions about her own stepson.

And meanwhile, that notice on her door. Five days. My mother packing her dishes into boxes with her bad eyes, wondering where she would sleep.

Calling anyone would have meant Mom being put out while it got sorted. Paying today would keep her home tonight. That was the whole of it, and once I said it to myself, I turned the key.

On the way I called my husband. Odell runs a grader for the county, and that week they were on a road job two counties over. I could hear the engine idling behind him.

I told him the whole thing in about four sentences.

“How much?” he said.

“Twenty-one hundred.”

He didn’t even breathe in. “Pay it,” he said. “Pay it this morning. We’ll sort the rest out later. You want me to come home?”

“No,” I said. “I want you to finish your road. I’ve got this.”

“I know you do,” he said. “Call me at noon.”