The Prayer Card Behind the Baseboard

She shook her head, and then she changed her mind, and then she sat in the porch chair, the wicker one, and held on to the bag. I took the other chair.

“My contractor is a man named Omer,” she said. “He’s been working on the front hall since Memorial Day. Ten days ago, he pulled the old oak baseboard by the door.”

She was speaking carefully, like a woman who had said the sentences over to herself in the dark.

“He called me over. He had it in his hand with a flashlight. There was a mouse nest and a quarter inch of dust, and this, lying flat against the plaster. He said, Marcy, I think this is for you.”

She turned the bag over. I could see the lamb on the front, faded nearly to nothing.

“I read it standing in my front hall,” she said. “I read it six times. Then I went upstairs and I sat on the bathroom floor, because I did not want my son to hear me.”

I said nothing. I did not trust my voice.

“I’ve been alone in that house a year and a half, Mrs. Nagel. I could not sleep. I sat in the front room at three in the morning with the lights off. I’d gotten to where I was saying out loud, to nobody, I can’t do another winter here by myself. I said it the night before Omer found the card.”

She had begun to cry, quietly. I put out my hand and she took it, and she held on.

“And this was in the wall,” she said. “A prayer for whoever lives here. Written before I was born.”

“It was a long time to wait,” I said.

She laughed, and cried at the same time. “I took it to the café on Friday. I didn’t know what else to do. I asked the woman at the counter if she had ever heard of a girl named Delma who used to live on Cedar.”

“Ruthie,” I said.

“She looked at me for the longest time. Then she poured me a coffee and she said, Honey, I think you’d better go and meet her. And she told me about the car.”

I put my free hand over my face. “I am so sorry about the car.”

“Don’t you dare,” said Marcy. “Mrs. Nagel, I called the deputy because I was scared and I did not know. I’ve felt sick about it since Friday. I looked out my window for two years at a gray Buick, and I never once wondered why somebody would sit there so patiently. I just got scared.”

She wiped her face with the back of her wrist.

“Ruthie said you keep a notebook. She said you’ve kept one since you were sixteen, and every family who has lived in that house is in it.”

“I do,” I said. “Four of them.”

“Then here is what I came to ask.” She sat up straight. She looked directly at me. “Am I in it?”

“Yes,” I said.

“What does it say next to my name? What have you been asking for me? I’d like to hear it out loud, if you would tell me. I need to hear it from the person who said it.”

I could not have refused her if I had wanted to.