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My neighbor Joyce came over that Sunday carrying a tuna casserole.
“Heard you were new,” she said, placing it on my counter as if we had known each other for years. “I don’t ask questions unless they’re invited.”
“I appreciate that,” I told her.
“My Walter passed in ’09. The first month, I forgot how to eat. So I’m not asking if you’re hungry. I’m just leaving this here.”
I nearly cried over the casserole.
I managed not to, but barely.
—
On Wednesdays, I began attending the small country church farther up the road. No one there knew who Garrett had been. They only knew I sang alto and brought pound cake when it was my turn.
Little by little, I stopped expecting the phone to ring. I stopped practicing what I would say if Margaret ever apologized. I began accepting that the silence might be the rest of my life, and I told myself I could learn to live peacefully inside it.
Exactly two weeks after Garrett’s funeral, I was hanging sheets on the clothesline behind the trailer when tires crunched over the gravel.
I turned with a clothespin between my lips, expecting Joyce or perhaps the propane delivery man. Instead, a black limousine stopped beside my mailbox, long and misplaced like a piano in a cornfield.
The driver stepped out first. Then a tall man in a gray suit emerged, carrying a leather folder and a sealed cream envelope.
“Eleanor?” he said gently as he crossed the uneven yard. “I’m Mr. Whitfield. I was your husband’s attorney.”
The clothespin slipped from my mouth.
“Garrett instructed me to wait until after his passing before contacting you,” he said. “He wanted you to see clearly who his children were. It took me some time to track down this address through your church. He left strict instructions that I deliver this to you personally, to make sure you got exactly what you deserved.”
Mr. Whitfield handed me the envelope. My name was written across it in my late husband’s handwriting.
My hands trembled so badly that opening the seal took three attempts.
I read the first line.