Part 8
On Monday, Nancy reached the car lot early. She had washed the pickup on Sunday, then realized she was scrubbing the ridges of the bed as if cleanliness might persuade the buyer to give her back the years of work she had put into it. The truck was clean enough. She had gone inside and left it alone.
Now she checked beneath the seats for the last time. A child’s hair elastic came out with a wrapper and two quarters. Leah had worn those thick fabric ties in high school, one on her wrist whenever she thought she might need to help in the shop. Nancy put it in her coat pocket.
The clerk needed the title and her identification. The man who had made the offer walked around the truck again while she stood beside it holding the keys. She noticed a smear on the passenger window where Otis’s nose had been and let it remain.
Paul arrived before the paperwork was finished. He sat in the waiting area and returned two calls about the laundry, keeping his voice down. Nancy signed where the clerk indicated, checked the amount, and asked for a copy of everything.
When she walked out, the pickup was no longer hers. She stood beside Paul’s truck with the familiar keys absent from her hand and had a brief, foolish fear that she had locked them inside.
“Bank?” Paul asked.
She nodded.
At the teller’s window, Nancy arranged the repayment to Leah and kept the confirmation. She had imagined this moment several times over the weekend, usually with her daughter present to see she meant it. In fact, there was a line behind her, a printer that needed paper, and a teller who apologized twice for the delay.
Nancy called Leah from the passenger seat afterward.
“It’s done. I sent the confirmation. Check your account when you can.”
Leah asked her to wait. Nancy could hear tapping, then the faint noise of the motel television.
“I see it,” her daughter said.
“All of it?”
“Yes. Thank you for paying it back.”
Nancy closed her eyes and kept the phone against her ear.
Leah had called Mrs. Givens that morning. Her references had checked out, and the landlord had approved the application subject to the deposit and signed paperwork. Leah had until that afternoon to accept. Nancy began to offer to come, then stopped before the sentence got far enough to require refusal.
“I hope it works,” she said.
Paul dropped Nancy at his house and went back to the laundry. Otis was asleep on the rug, one hind foot moving in a dream. She sat beside him with the bank confirmation on her lap and waited for some large feeling to arrive.
What came instead was a list of things she could not do tomorrow. She could not take the last linen order out to the restaurant herself. She could not drive to the motel because she wanted to see Ben. She could ask for a ride, arrange something in advance, or stay home.
Her phone rang at three. Leah had signed the lease. She could have the keys Friday, once Mrs. Givens finished cleaning and a minor repair in the bathroom. The weekly motel payment would carry her through Thursday night, and the landlord had agreed to an early Friday handover.
“Can Paul bring the crib?” Leah asked.
“I’ll ask him. Would you like me to come?”
There was a short pause. “To help carry things, yes.”
Nancy looked at the dog. His ear lifted when she shifted on the rug, then settled again.
“There’s something else I need to tell you first.”
Leah said nothing.
“When you asked about the alarm, I said I had it handled because I didn’t want you asking again. I wasn’t waiting for a replacement. I hadn’t ordered one.”
Her daughter breathed into the phone. Nancy could hear the effort she was making not to answer too quickly.
“I knew you thought I’d fixed it,” Nancy continued. “I let you think that.”
She held the phone against her ear and did not add the bills, the washer, the nights she had got up with Ben so Leah could sleep. Those things were still true. They would not change this one.
“Why are you telling me now?” Leah asked.
Nancy stared at the little hair elastic she had set on the table. “Because I want you to let me help Friday. And you should know that before you decide.”
For a while, the motel television was the only sound. Nancy waited with Otis’s warm back against her shin.
“I knew it was more than forgetting,” Leah said eventually.
Nancy pressed her free hand flat on the floor. The rug was rough beneath her palm.
“I don’t want you taking Ben alone,” Leah said. “Not for a while. And if I ask a question, I need the answer, even if you think I won’t like it.”
“Yes.”
“I’m still angry.”
“I know.”
Nancy pressed her lips together. Leah shifted the phone, and the television went quiet.
They talked about Friday. Paul’s pickup could collect the portable crib at the motel after Ben woke, then carry it with the bags at Paul’s house. Leah would bring the remaining motel things in her car. The few boxes upstairs could wait until safe access was arranged. Nancy wrote the plan down and read it back once.
After the call, she found the bell in the bag of items retrieved from the kitchen. Paul had put it there when he collected Otis’s bowl. Its leather loop was worn pale where it had hung against the doorknob.
Nancy began to fasten it to Paul’s back door, then remembered whose house she was in. She set it beside Otis’s food instead and sent Leah a photograph.
Do you want this at the new place?
Her daughter replied a minute later.
Yes. Bring it Friday.
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