Wendell had given me his address once.
It was a small thing that happened a few weeks earlier.
We'd been talking about what to do if either of us needed help, and he'd written his address on a paper napkin.
"Just in case," he'd said.
I'd folded the napkin and tucked it away.
Now I couldn't remember where.
I checked the drawer beside the telephone.
Then the drawer underneath it.
I found an old grocery receipt, two pens that didn't work, and a stack of coupons I'd forgotten to use.
No address.
I was about to give up when I remembered the junk drawer in the kitchen.
Everybody has one.
Mine contained spare batteries, rubber bands, a flashlight, and an old phone book that had been sitting there long after I'd stopped using it.
The napkin was underneath the phone book.
Wendell's handwriting was easy to recognize.
I stood at the counter, holding the paper between my fingers.
For a few seconds, I considered calling him.
I could have asked him directly why he'd kept his home off-limits.
I could have told him that my children were worried.
I could have given him one more chance to explain.
But I knew what would happen.
He would tell me to wait until Christmas.
And I would probably agree.
I was tired of waiting for an answer to a question I had every right to ask.
On Thursday, I decided to drive out there.
I changed my blouse twice before settling on the blue one I wore to church.
It wasn't a date.
I wasn't trying to impress him.
Still, I wanted to look presentable.
I checked the address against the map on my phone and put the napkin in my purse.
Then I locked the front door and climbed into my car.
The drive took about forty minutes.
I left the busier roads behind and followed the smaller routes beyond Ferris.
There were stretches of open land, scattered houses, and long driveways where trucks sat beside sheds.
The farther I went, the quieter everything became.
I kept thinking about Zach.
He would have called this foolish.
He would have said I was walking straight into a situation I didn't understand.
Maybe he would have been right.
But I couldn't keep letting other people decide what I was allowed to know.
When I finally reached the address, I slowed down.
The house was small and white, with a chain-link fence along the front and a large pecan tree shading part of the yard.
It looked ordinary.
Not fancy.
Not frightening.
Just a little country house that had probably been standing there for decades.
Wendell's truck was parked behind the house near a shed.
I recognized it immediately.
My hands tightened around the steering wheel.
Then I noticed the garage.
The door was raised all the way.
Inside, I could see the edge of a workbench and some lumber stacked against the wall.
A radio was playing country music.
The sound carried across the yard.
I pulled to a stop and left the engine running.
For a moment, I couldn't move.
This was the part I'd imagined all week.
I had pictured a woman opening the door.
I had pictured Wendell standing beside her, looking at me with the expression of a man caught in a lie.
I had pictured myself driving away with my face burning, wondering how I'd managed to be so foolish.
Nothing had happened yet.
I was still sitting in my car, making myself miserable over things that existed only in my imagination.
I could turn around.
I could drive home and tell myself that I had respected his privacy.
I could keep seeing him on Sundays and pretend the question didn't matter.
Then I thought of Zach sitting at my kitchen table with my bank account open on his phone.
I thought of Megan's silence before she told me lonely people got taken.
I thought of the way I'd started doubting my own judgment.
I wasn't going to let fear make the decision for me.
I turned off the engine.
The sudden quiet inside the car made the radio from the garage sound louder.
I checked my purse for my keys, even though I knew they were in my hand.
Then I got out.
The air smelled like dry grass and warm dirt.
I shut the car door and stood beside it for a moment.
Nobody came out of the house.
Nobody called my name.
I walked toward the gate.
My good shoes were a poor choice for the gravel driveway, and I had to watch where I stepped.
I remember being annoyed about that.
After thirty-four years of hospital work, I had developed a habit of noticing the small discomforts when I was nervous.
The shoes.
The gravel.
The heat gathering beneath my collar.
Anything to keep my mind from running ahead of me.
The garage was closer than it had looked from the road.
As I approached, I caught the smell of freshly cut pine.
It was clean and sharp, the scent of new lumber.
I stopped just outside the opening.
There were tools arranged on a workbench.
A tape measure lay beside a pencil.
Several boards had been cut to length and stacked neatly against the wall.
It didn't look like a place where someone had abandoned a job halfway through.
It looked like someone had been working carefully.
I glanced toward the house.
The garage opened onto a door leading inside.
And there, stretching from the garage floor to that doorway, was a ramp.
It was made of new wood.
The boards were broad and laid evenly.
The surface rose gently toward the entrance instead of climbing in a steep, awkward angle.
Rails ran along both sides.
They were smooth, sturdy, and positioned where somebody could reach them without straining.
I stepped closer.
The lumber was still pale and unfinished.
I could see the grain in the boards and the small marks left by the tools that had shaped them.
This wasn't something thrown together in an afternoon.
Someone had measured it.
Someone had planned it.
Someone had taken the time to make it wide enough for a person to move along without feeling trapped between the rails.
I stood there looking at the ramp.
Then I remembered my mother.
Her kitchen with its yellow walls.
The years when she could no longer move around the house without help.
The way she'd gripped furniture as she crossed a room because she hated asking anyone to hold her arm.
I remembered telling Wendell about her.
I remembered telling him about my own knees and making that careless joke about ending up in a wheelchair.
He hadn't laughed.
At the time, I'd thought he was simply a serious man.
Now I wasn't so sure.
I looked at the ramp again.
The country music continued playing behind me.
A small breeze moved through the pecan tree, and a few leaves drifted onto the gravel.
I had come to this house expecting to catch Wendell in a lie.
I had come prepared to be angry.
But standing there, with the smell of pine in the air and those carefully fitted rails in front of me, I felt the first real doubt about the story my son had told.
Maybe Wendell had been hiding something.
Maybe he had a reason he couldn't explain yet.
But whatever was happening inside that little white house, it had taken more than a passing thought to build this ramp.
I moved toward the doorway.
For the first time since I'd turned onto the road, I wasn't thinking about Zach or Megan.
I was thinking about Wendell.
And I was ready to ask him the question myself.
Click here to continue reading: PART 5: The Ramp Was Built Too Carefully to Be an Afterthought, and for the First Time I Wondered What Wendell Had Been Planning
My Husband Had Been Gone Two Years, but the First Man Who Made Me Feel Alive Again Had Something He Wouldn’t Explain
Part 4 of 24
