“I’m going to keep paying,” he said into my shoulder.
“I know you are,” I said.
Sarah comes every Sunday now. She paid off two of her cards by selling her car and taking the bus. She found a financial counselor through her church. She’s still working on the rest.
We have lunch. Sometimes she helps me in the garden. Last month, while we were pulling weeds by the cherry tree, she started crying out of nowhere.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I keep thinking about that lady,” she said. “In the hallway in Everett. In the wheelchair. Asking everybody if they’d seen her daughter.”
I put my dirty gardening glove on her shoulder.
“You’re here,” I said. “That’s what matters. You’re here now.”
Michael’s truck got repossessed in January. I let it happen. Gloria helped me work out a settlement with the lender so it wouldn’t ruin my credit. Michael drives a fifteen-year-old Corolla now. He hates it. He’s also gone back to school at night to finish the business degree he dropped out of at twenty.
