She didn’t tell me to calm down.
She put water beside the bed and left the door open while I called Kelly again.
Later, we sat at her kitchen table.
For months, I had pictured Marlene judging us from that room.
Gavin said she thought I should have waited to get pregnant until his business was more established.
I had stopped sending her nursery pictures.
She had stopped asking to visit.
“He said you wanted privacy,” she told me. “That every question I asked made you feel as though I was checking whether you were a good mother.”
“I asked him to invite you to the shower.”
Marlene looked down.
“He said you wanted it to be your friends. I sent the little sweater through him.”
I had found that sweater in a shopping bag by the garage door.
Gavin told me a customer’s wife had passed along baby things she didn’t need.
It was yellow with wooden flower buttons.
“You made it?”
“I started it after your first ultrasound.”
I covered my face for a moment.
Then I showed her the picture Kelly had taken at the shower.
The sweater was folded beside the cake.
“I loved it,” I said.
Marlene touched the screen.
Neither of us spoke until the slow cooker clicked.
I asked why she had sent the eight thousand without calling me.
“He said you were embarrassed about needing help. He asked me to let him take care of it so you wouldn’t feel indebted to me.”
“And you believed him.”
“Yes.”
She retrieved a small notebook from a drawer.
Inside were dates, amounts, and account names from her own budget.
The eight thousand had come from retirement savings.
She had planned to replace her old car, then decided it could last a few more years.
“I’m not telling you that so you’ll feel responsible,” she said. “I want you to understand what I thought I was doing.”
She had handled the books at the hardware store where her husband, Frank, worked.
After he died, she managed the house, insurance, and bills herself.
She knew how to read statements.
“Did you know he gambled?” I asked.
Marlene closed the notebook.
“When he was younger. He lost money meant for a course he wanted to take. Frank and I paid the balance.”
I waited.
