That night I sat at the kitchen table on Alder Street with the drawing and a cup of tea I never drank. I did the arithmetic I should have done the day we buried Arlen.
More than a thousand mornings my grandson had walked up to my glove, and I never said his name.
I thought of the cards that came back with two words on the envelope. Not yet. Corwin had written that as a grieving man and never taken it back, and I had never once asked him to.
At about two in the morning, in Arlen’s recliner, it finally came to me. I had been waiting for an apology that was never owed me.
I had said the cruelest thing I knew to the woman who stayed up with my son’s baby every night of his life. I decided I was the injured party because I was the widow.
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I did not even know what had happened that week. I never asked Tamsen one question. I accused her, which is a lot easier than asking.
And Corwin had written not yet. He had not written never. A woman who wants to know where a door stands has to knock on it, and I had spent six years standing in the road with my arm up, waiting for the door to come to me.
I could not knock on that house, not with the way I had left things. I did not have the right to walk up the steps and put it on their porch like a bill.
Whatever I owed, I owed out loud, in the same place I had been silent.
I made up my mind before the sun came up. I called Sergeant Vetter at six that morning, which I had never done, and asked if I could speak to the line on Friday, the last day of school, after the last child had crossed.
He was quiet a moment. Then he said, “Wilma, I have been waiting six years for you to call me about something that is not the schedule. What are you going to say?”
I told him. And I told him the rest of it too, that when I had said it I would hand in my vest.
He said, “Wilma. That corner is the only place you see that boy.”
I said, “I know it is.”
He said, “Braylin starts middle school in the fall. He won’t come past your corner anyway. But as long as you stand on it, you can tell yourself the door is open.”
I said, “I have been telling myself that for six years, Sergeant. I used a public job to sit and wait for someone else to move first. I am done waiting.”
There was a long breath on the phone. He said, “You will be missed on that corner more than you know. I will be parked right there Friday. Hold the stop until every child is across.”
I did not sleep much Thursday. I took the plaque down from the kitchen wall and set it by the door, to give back with the vest.