We left early on Sunday morning.
Nate packed sandwiches while I filled two bottles with water.
We didn't spend money on breakfast.
Old habits were difficult to break.
But we agreed not to turn the trip into another exercise in counting every penny.
We drove toward the lake where Nate had once taken his fishing boat.
The boat was gone, but the road was familiar.
He pointed out the place where he used to buy bait.
Then he showed me the turnoff he had taken when the water was low.
I listened to his stories.
I had heard some of them before, but I didn't mind.
He sounded happier talking about the lake than he had in months.
We parked near a public walking path.
The air smelled of damp earth and pine.
We walked slowly, stopping whenever the path opened onto the water.
Nate put his hands in his pockets.
"I used to come here whenever I needed to think."
"What did you think about?"
"Everything."
I smiled.
"That's not an answer."
He looked at the lake.
"Sometimes work. Sometimes money. Sometimes what I wanted to do with my life."
"And now?"
He turned toward me.
"Now I mostly think about whether we've bought enough electrical supplies."
I laughed.
He laughed too.
For a while, we were simply a husband and wife taking a walk.
We didn't talk about the bluebird card.
We didn't talk about Ron.
We didn't talk about the auction.
We watched a pair of ducks move through the reeds and ate our sandwiches on a bench.
When we returned home that evening, the house was still unfinished.
The porch still needed paint.
The roof still needed work.
But we had remembered something important.
A home was not only a place to repair.
It was a place where life was supposed to happen.
The following week, Opal called me at the hospital.
She asked whether I could visit her after work.
I told her I could come by on Friday.
When I arrived, she was sitting at her kitchen table with a stack of old photographs spread before her.
She had made tea.
There were biscuits on a plate.
I put my handbag on a chair and sat across from her.
"What are all these?"
"Things I should have sorted years ago."
She pushed one photograph toward me.
It showed a younger Opal standing beside a small house.
A man stood next to her, one hand resting on a wooden fence.
I recognized him from the pictures Nate kept of his grandfather.
"That's your grandfather," I said.
"Yes."
She touched the edge of the photograph.
"We didn't have much when we started out."
I waited.
"We rented a place with a leaking roof and a stove that worked when it felt like it. Your grandfather repaired farm equipment after his regular work, and I took in sewing."
She smiled faintly.
"Some weeks, I thought we'd never get ahead."
I looked at the photograph again.
"What happened?"
"We kept going. We saved what we could. Eventually, we bought a small house."
She paused.
"It wasn't a good house when we bought it, either."
I laughed.
"That sounds familiar."
"There's nothing wrong with an old house if you know what you're taking on."
She gathered a few photographs into a neat pile.
Then she looked at me.
"When I saw the notice about your property, I wanted to know whether you had bought it because it made sense or because you were hurt."
"I understand."
"I didn't want you to make a decision that would punish you for something someone else had done."
I thought about the auction.
I thought about the months of extra shifts and the money we had counted at the kitchen table.
"We checked the house carefully," I said. "We knew it would need work. We also knew we couldn't afford to bid beyond our limit."
Opal nodded.
"That was sensible."
"We didn't buy it to make a point."
She looked at me for a moment.
"Perhaps a little."
I couldn't help smiling.
She smiled too.
"There's nothing shameful about wanting to prove to yourself that you can build something," she said. "The trouble starts when you let another person's opinion decide what you must do next."
I thought about how often I had imagined Ron seeing the finished house.
I had pictured his surprise.
I had pictured him asking how we had managed it.
I had even imagined telling him that we had done it without his money.
Those thoughts had given me energy on difficult days.
But they had also kept me tied to the Easter dinner long after it was over.
Opal seemed to understand what I was thinking.
"Don't spend the rest of your life trying to win an argument nobody is having," she said.
I looked down at the photographs.
That sentence stung because it was true.
I had spent so much time imagining what other people thought of us that I had sometimes forgotten to ask what we thought of ourselves.
I wanted our house because we needed a place to live.
I wanted the freedom to make decisions without asking permission.
I wanted to plant something in the yard and watch it grow.
Those were good reasons.
They were enough.
Opal poured more tea.
Then she asked whether Nate had been resting.
I told her we had taken a Sunday off and gone to the lake.
Her face softened.
"Good."
"We needed it."
"Most people do."
She leaned back in her chair.
"I've watched people work their whole lives to earn the approval of relatives who were never going to give it to them."
I thought of the way Ron had raised his coffee mug.
I thought of Judy's card.
"Did that happen in your family?" I asked.
Opal looked toward the window.
"More than once."
She didn't explain further.
I didn't push her.
We spent the next hour sorting photographs and talking about ordinary things.
Before I left, she gave me a small envelope containing several printed pictures of the house she and her husband had bought decades earlier.
She wanted me to see how it had looked before they repaired it.
The roof was uneven.
The yard was bare.
The windows were old.
I studied the photographs.
"It looked terrible."
"It did."
"And you fixed it?"
"Over time."
I laughed.
"That's what everyone keeps telling us."
"Because it's true."
I slipped the photographs into my handbag.
On the drive home, I thought about the difference between Opal's advice and the praise we had received at Easter.
She didn't tell me I could handle anything.
She reminded me that I didn't have to handle everything at once.
That was a kinder kind of confidence.
When I reached the Miller property, Nate was outside working near the porch.
I showed him the photographs.
He examined them carefully.
"Your grandmother really did start with a fixer-upper."
"Apparently."
He pointed to a picture of a narrow kitchen.
"That looks worse than ours."
I laughed.
"Don't give yourself ideas."
We went inside and put the photographs in the drawer with our paperwork.
I placed the bluebird card beside them.
For the first time, the two things seemed to belong together.
One showed us what we had been told about ourselves.
The others showed us what people could build without having everything handed to them.
Neither story needed to erase the other.
We could acknowledge that the card had hurt.
We could also acknowledge that our work had given us something valuable.
I closed the drawer.
Then Nate asked what I wanted for dinner.
I looked at the clock.
"We have eggs."
He groaned.
"We always have eggs."
"Then you should have bought something else."
He laughed and reached for his jacket.
We drove into town and bought chicken, potatoes, and a small bag of apples.
It cost more than our usual dinner.
We could afford it.
And for once, we didn't argue about whether we should.
Click here to continue reading: PART 11: The Next Time Ron Asked About Our Finances, I Answered Honestly Instead of Hiding Behind the Word Fine
Everyone at the Easter Table Received an Envelope, but Only One Couple Was Told They Needed Nothing
Part 10 of 20
