The Buick rattled when I turned onto my road.
I knew that sound well enough not to worry about it.
I had driven the car for twelve years, and it had carried me through more ordinary days than I could count.
That afternoon, though, I found myself thinking about how much of my life had depended on things I had taken for granted.
A reliable car.
A regular paycheck.
A place to work every Monday and Thursday.
For twenty-six years, I had known what my week would look like.
Now I had to plan around questions I could not yet answer.
I parked beside my house and carried my purse inside.
The kitchen table was exactly as I had left it.
I could still see the faint ring left by my coffee cup that morning.
I put my purse down and took out Rosella's notes.
Then I sat.
I didn't open the drawer where I had kept Carlton's check.
I wasn't ready to look at it again.
Instead, I read the notes from the courthouse.
Henrietta had made an arrangement.
My name appeared in the official record.
Rosella had been asked to contact me after Henrietta died.
Those facts were becoming familiar.
What I still lacked was a complete understanding of what the arrangement meant.
I had to remind myself not to fill that gap with guesses.
It would have been easy to imagine that Henrietta had intended to solve all my problems.
It would have been just as easy to assume the record meant nothing useful at all.
Neither conclusion was justified.
I had to wait until I knew more.
That was difficult for me.
I had always preferred a clear answer and a job I could finish.
When I cleaned Henrietta's kitchen, I knew when the counters were done.
When I washed the floors, I knew when they were dry.
But this was not a floor I could leave shining and walk away from.
It was a matter that required patience.
I made myself a cup of coffee.
Then I took the chair nearest the window and looked out at the road.
A neighbor passed in a pickup truck.
Somewhere nearby, a dog barked.
Life continued as it always had.
I wondered whether the Lockridge sons were thinking about the farmhouse that afternoon.
Perhaps they were sorting their mother's belongings.
Perhaps they were discussing what to keep and what to sell.
I had no way of knowing.
I had not been invited back.
Carlton had made that plain enough.
I could still picture the screen door between us.
His hand holding the check.
The kitchen behind him, where Thurston and Bertram had stood drinking their mother's coffee.
I had tried not to dwell on the memory.
But it returned whenever I thought about the farmhouse.
The part that hurt most was not that Carlton had ended my employment.
He had every right to decide he no longer needed a cleaner.
It was the way he had done it.
He hadn't asked me to come inside.
He hadn't offered me a chair.
He hadn't spoken about the years I had worked for his mother.
He had treated the matter as though I were a service he could discontinue with a few words and a check.
I had driven away feeling small.
I had even called him sir.
I still wished I hadn't.
That evening, I took the check from its envelope.
I placed it on the table and studied the amount.
Three hundred dollars would cover some immediate expenses.
I could not afford to let pride keep me from using money I needed.
I put the check back in the envelope.
I would decide what to do with it the next day.
Then I returned to the bills I had arranged beside the sugar bowl.
I wrote down what I could spend on groceries.
I checked the amount I needed for electricity.
I set aside money for gas.
There was no room for carelessness.
The record at the courthouse might turn out to be important, but it had not paid a single bill yet.
I needed to keep that distinction clear.
After supper, I called Alfreda.
She answered while I was still deciding how to begin.
"Did you hear anything else?"
I told her I had returned to the courthouse and reviewed the record with Rosella.
I explained that Henrietta had made her wishes known while she was alive.
Alfreda listened quietly.
"So what does it mean, Mama?"
"I am still trying to understand all of it."
"Do you think it has something to do with the house?"
"I know it concerns the property. I don't want to guess beyond that."
She sighed.
"I just don't want those men turning this around on you."
Neither did I.
But I was no longer willing to let that possibility prevent me from learning what Henrietta had done.
"I won't go looking for trouble," I told her. "But I won't pretend I wasn't contacted, either."
Alfreda was quiet for a moment.
"Just be careful."
"I will."
We talked a little longer.
She told me about an ordinary problem at home, and I listened.
I was glad she had called.
We were still mother and daughter, even when she could not give me the help I wanted.
When we hung up, I placed the telephone back on its stand.
I thought about Henrietta.
She had been ninety-four when she died.
Her mind had remained clear almost to the end.
She had known how to make decisions and how to carry them out.
That was one reason I had trusted her.
She did not usually leave important matters to chance.
The napkin with my name on it had seemed like such a small thing.
Now I wondered how many other details she had attended to without telling me.
I would never know all of them.
But I could respect the care she had taken.
I folded the notes and put them in the drawer.
Then I turned off the kitchen light.
For the first time since the funeral, I went to bed without thinking that my working life had ended and nothing else could follow.
I still didn't know what lay ahead.
But I had stopped assuming that the worst thing that had happened to me would be the last thing that mattered.
Click here to continue reading: PART 18: The Friday Coffee I Shared With Henrietta Had Never Seemed Important Until I Realized How Carefully She Had Remembered the People Around Her
For Twenty-Six Years, I Thought I Knew My Place in That Family, Until Mrs. Lockridge Asked Me a Question I Couldn’t Understand
Part 17 of 24
