Mom came out every Wednesday after that Sunday. Every single Wednesday.
She brought a pan of something every time. A hotdish. A coffee cake. Bars. Once, a whole ham.
She didn’t mention the house. I didn’t either.
She helped Kenzie with her spelling words at the kitchen table. She showed Hannah how to make pie crust with lard, the way Grandma Kirchner did. Cold hands, cold lard, don’t overwork it.
One Wednesday in May, I came home early from the route.
The house was quiet. The kids were still at school. Mom’s car was in the yard, but she wasn’t in the kitchen.
I went upstairs.
I found her standing all alone in the little room under the eaves. The closet door was open.
Her hand was resting flat against the door frame.
Right on JEFF 5 1988.
Her shoulders were shaking.
I didn’t go in.
I went back downstairs as quietly as I could. And I put the coffee on.
When she came down twenty minutes later, her eyes were red. She sat down at the table. I set a cup in front of her with two spoons of sugar.
She didn’t say anything about the closet.
She just said, “That Kenzie is a good speller.”
“She is,” I said.
“Better than you were.”
“Everybody was better than me.”
She laughed. A little. And she drank her coffee.
In August, the old Vander Woude place came up for sale.
It’s a little one-and-a-half-story house a mile and a half down our gravel road. White with green shutters. A detached garage. A big garden spot out back. Two old lilac bushes by the back door that have been there since before I was born.
Old Mrs. Vander Woude had gone to live with her daughter in Orange City. She was ninety-one.
They were asking a hundred and thirty-eight thousand dollars.
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