Before any of them could find the next question, Mrs. Bell from the choir arrived with a paper plate of deviled eggs and the expression of someone carrying news.
“Did you all hear about Walter?”
Sylvie’s stomach did something quick and unpleasant. “No.”Open Checking
“The senior golf club is honoring him at a dinner this Friday. Something about family contributions. Committees, fundraising, all of that.”
Jeremiah’s face changed in the way his face changed when he was processing something he didn’t like. “Dad’s getting a family award?”
“That’s what I heard. Very nice event, apparently.”
Adele’s mouth went the flat, controlled way it went when she was deciding not to say the
first thing that came to mind.
Chanel said it instead. “Family award. That’s something.”Marriage
Sylvie picked up her purse. “I could use some air.”
She made it to the side door of the hall before she had to stop and just stand for a moment, her hand on the brick wall, breathing carefully.
Walter. Getting a family award.
She let the irony of that sit where it was. She had spent fifty years becoming the architecture of that family. She had raised three children, managed the household, hosted every Christmas and Thanksgiving and Easter and birthday, and cared for his mother at the end when he said hospitals made him too anxious. She had stretched his paycheck through the lean years. She had kept his pills on the counter so he wouldn’t forget them on his way out the door.Debit & Checking Services
Family award.
She breathed in.
Then she drove
home and called Dr. Evans’s office to start the scheduling process.
The Morning She Put On Her Good Shoes and Took the Bus to the BankGet Marriage Tips
She could not put the surgery off any longer.
She understood the insurance situation clearly — Dr. Evans had walked her through it, and she had made Adele help her review the paperwork afterward because two sets of eyes were better than one when the numbers were this consequential. The insurance would cover a portion. The rest — deductibles, hospital fees, medications, the help she would need during recovery — would come from somewhere.
Thursday morning, she put on her best church shoes, tucked Walter’s card into her purse, and took the bus to the bank.
She had not driven because her hands had been shaking since she woke up. Some things she knew her limits on.Open Checking
