The envelopes were tucked under the Easter plates. One at every place setting. Each with a name written on it in my mother-in-law’s round schoolteacher handwriting.
Kim opened hers first.
She’s the oldest. Divorced two years. Raising two boys in a rented trailer behind the grain elevator. She looked at what was inside the envelope and put her hand flat over her mouth.
Then Jeff opened his. He’d been laid off from the Caterpillar plant in the fall. He was driving a propane truck part-time now. He read his, and he looked up at his father, and he couldn’t get a single word out.
Then Stacy. The baby of the family. Twenty-six years old, with her nursing school loans. She started crying into her napkin.
“Twenty thousand dollars each,” Ron said from the head of the table.
He had his hand resting on the back of Judy’s chair.
“Toward a house. Your mother and I sold the forty acres down by the creek. We want to see you kids settled while we’re still alive to see it.”
Everybody was up out of their chairs and hugging. The ham was getting cold. Kim’s boys wanted to know what was happening, and Kim couldn’t even tell them.
Nate and I had one envelope between us.
I slid my thumb under the flap.
It was a greeting card. It had a bluebird on the front.
Inside, Judy had written:
You two have always been so capable. We never worry about you. Love, Mom and Dad.
There was nothing else in the envelope.
I looked. I’m a hospital billing clerk. I check things twice for a living. So I checked twice.
I passed the card to Nate under the edge of the tablecloth.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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