Josh didn’t answer right away. He looked out at the yard for a long time, at the clothesline, the swing set we’d put up for the nephews, the garden with its rows of green beans.
I’d spent the morning doing what I do at work. I’d made phone calls and gotten the facts.
First I called Dad’s homeowner’s insurance agent, a nice man named Mr. Kessler at the Farm Bureau office in Ozark. I asked whether Dad’s policy would cover the hearing aids.
“I’m sorry, Kayla,” he said. “Unless he’d added them to his policy as scheduled personal property, a standard homeowner’s policy generally doesn’t cover something just being lost in a pond. It covers things like fire and theft. Dropping something in the water isn’t one of the covered causes. I wish I had better news.”
Then I called the audiology clinic in Springfield. The office manager confirmed that the loss and damage warranty on Dad’s pair had expired six months earlier. A new comparable pair would run between $4,000 and $4,500, depending on the model. They offered financing through a medical credit card, at zero interest for twelve months but twenty-six percent after that.
I knew all about those medical credit cards from work. I’ve seen them swallow older patients whole.
Then, God help me, I looked up the small claims court rules in Missouri. You can sue someone in small claims for up to $5,000 without a lawyer. The filing fee in Greene County is around forty dollars. I could have filed against Cindy for the full $4,100, and I had forty witnesses.
I sat at my kitchen table and imagined it. Me and Dad on one side of a courtroom. Cindy on the other, in her coral lipstick. Josh in the middle, having to testify about his own mother.
I closed the laptop.
