The Last Page In The Yellow Book Finally Brought Us Home

We moved on the first Saturday in November.

The little house had two bedrooms, a narrow porch, and a kitchen window that looked onto a pecan tree. Rent was seven hundred twenty-five dollars a month. The deposit was the same.

I had saved for both from my new job. I kept the amounts on a sheet inside a flour tin, even though the money stayed in the bank.

Writing it down helped me sleep.

Mason had signed a written release from the old lease. His attorney sent the six hundred fifty dollar deposit back after I returned the duplex keys. I photographed the empty rooms and saved the receipt.

Then I closed that folder.

Mother carried dishes into our new kitchen. Alma brought soup in a pot big enough to feed the block.

Della and her husband hauled the sewing machine in their pickup. I paid them forty dollars for the truck and fuel, which Della accepted without a fuss.

I liked having people around me who could give help and still respect a price.

Nora chose the bedroom facing the tree.

"Can I put my desk by the window?"

"That's your room."

She stood still for a moment, taking in the answer.

At the duplex, she had always asked where things should go. I wondered how much she had understood about whose walls we lived inside.

By noon, she had set out her pencil cup and taped a paper sun above the desk.

Her medicine bag went on its usual hook near the door. Her breathing had stayed steady through the move. At her next check, we would talk about the winter plan, the way we always did.

I put the appointment on the calendar without hiding the cost behind another envelope.

On Monday, I went to work at the fund's small office beside the library. My desk faced a map of the county. Each ride had a booking number, a pickup time, and a place for us to confirm it was finished.

The blue credit slips were back in my file by then. After the case ended, Investigator Webb had returned them with another page for me to sign.

I read that one too.

At work, a new driver called because a rider hadn't answered the door.

"Don't mark her absent yet," I said. "She takes time to reach the phone."

I called her. She answered on the seventh ring, laughing because she had left her bag in the pantry.

The driver waited. The ride went through.

At five, I shut down my desk and went home. No one asked me to stay for unpaid hours because we were family.

There was a letter from Mason in the mail that week. It came through his attorney, as I had asked.

He wrote that he was ashamed. He said he had wanted something nice for himself and had counted on fixing the books later. When I questioned the charges, he had decided blaming me would be easier than admitting what he had done.

I read it once.

I didn't write back. I put it behind his correction in the closed folder. My decision about visits and calls stayed the same.

Mother came on Wednesdays now. She asked before coming, and she left when Nora needed to start homework.

We were learning small, plain ways to trust each other again.

On the first anniversary of Dad's death, we took flowers to his grave. Nora told him her new bedroom had a tree outside it.

I told him I still used number fourteen on the inside cover of my work notebook.

Then we drove home before dark and warmed Alma's soup.

After supper, Nora brought her yellow school book to the table. The corners were soft from months in her bag.

"I want the real papers put away," she said.

"They are."

"This one can just be my book?"

"Always was."

She took out the copies of the credit slips. I helped her place them in an envelope for the file. The empty pockets lay flat and clear.

She filled them with new drawings. A shuttle with crooked wheels. Alma carrying her pot. Grandma holding a stack of bowls. Me at my desk with a phone against my ear.

At the last pocket, she stopped me from turning the page.

"I finished the ending," she said.

Then she lifted her hand.

Inside was a drawing of our little house, with two pairs of shoes beside the door. She had colored both kitchen windows yellow. Under them, in her careful school letters, she had written, We Made It Home.