“Keep it,” he said. “For your gas.”
Rob did the same. He slid his check back across the table without a word.
I looked at the check with my name on it, Julie Hagen, $250.
Then I slid it back too.
Pam looked at the three checks sitting in front of her. Then she put her head down on Mom’s kitchen table and sobbed.
Mom got up out of her chair by the window. It took her a minute, because her knees aren’t what they used to be. She walked across the warm kitchen in her lavender cardigan and stood behind Pam. She put both hands on Pam’s shaking shoulders.
“There, now,” Mom said softly, the way she used to say it when we were little and scraped our knees. “There, now. We’re all here. We’re all warm. That’s what matters.”
We ate Easter dinner at two o’clock, all of us crowded around the big oak table in the dining room that Dad built in 1971. Ham, scalloped potatoes, green bean hotdish, Shirley’s famous rolls, and Mom’s kuchen for dessert.
Before we ate, Mom asked Rob to say the prayer, because that’s what Dad always did.
Rob bowed his head. He was quiet for a long moment.
“Lord,” he said finally, “thank you for this food and this family. Thank you for keeping Mom safe this winter when we didn’t. Help us do better at telling each other the truth.” He paused. “And tell Dad we’re working on it.”
“Amen,” Mom said, and her voice cracked.
After dinner, while the dishes soaked, we sat around the kitchen table and made a plan. It was the first real plan our family had made together since Dad died.
Mom’s propane would stay on keep-full delivery through the co-op, in my name. Every October, Rob, Dean, and I would send our propane money to me instead of to Pam. Pam wouldn’t send any. Rob insisted.
“You drive out here every week,” he told her. “That’s your share.”
Mom would keep her checking account at Harvey State Bank, with Rob and me as her agents under the power of attorney. Pam would have view-only online access so she could see every statement. So would Dean. Nobody in our family would ever have to wonder where Mom’s money went again.
Mom insisted on one more thing.
