Part 3 — Letter In The Joist
Mr. Comeaux unfolded the letter with careful fingers and cleared his throat. The whole backyard had gone still, the choir with crawfish in their hands, Celeste with her paper plate, and a little boy who had stopped chewing a piece of corn. “It is dated June of 2004,” he said. “It is addressed to Remy Guidry, and it is written in the hand of Reverend Lucien Thibodeaux.”
He read it slowly. “Remy, I am putting this letter where only a man who tears up my floor will find it, because I believe the Lord will bring him to it in His own time. Son, you were seventeen when you took $380 out of the Wednesday offering envelopes. I saw you. I put the money back from my own pocket and never told a soul, not the deacons, and not even Bernadette.”
“I did not tell because I looked at you and saw a boy who needed a hand more than he needed a punishment. I taught you to square a doorframe and to set stone, and I am proud of the work of your hands. But if you are reading this, then you have done wrong by my family, and by my wife above all. Go to Bernadette first. Tell her the truth. Then tell the law. Then do the work again with your own hands, and do it right. I forgave you in 2004. Forgive yourself enough to be honest. Lucien.”
Nobody breathed. Celeste had her hand pressed flat against her mouth. And Remy, my big loud son-in-law with his gold letters on the truck, slid down the patio wall until he was sitting on the concrete among the crawfish shells. He cried like a child. “He knew,” he said. “He knew the whole time, and he never said a word.”
I walked over slowly, on my cane. I did not feel angry. Lucien had spent forty-two years teaching me to look at a person and see the whole story. I told Remy that my husband had forgiven him a long time ago. I also told him that forgiveness is not the same as no consequences. Grace opens the door, but a man still has to walk through it and set things right.
Mr. Comeaux explained what would happen. The $88,000 claim had been filed with a false report about a storm that never came. Remy gave a full statement that same afternoon, with his lawyer sitting beside him. In the spring he pleaded guilty to insurance fraud. The judge gave him five years of probation, ordered him to repay every dollar of the claim and my $56,400, and suspended his contractor license for two years.
The insurance company released Lot 2207 back to me by court order. The floor Remy had laid in his own bathroom in Youngsville, the Calacatta Gold porcelain with the gold veins, was lifted piece by piece in October. Remy did it himself, on his knees, with a licensed inspector watching from the doorway.
The men of Bethel Baptist took it from there. Pastor Joel brought eleven of them in work boots, three Saturdays in a row, along with a deacon who had been a plumber at the refinery for thirty years. Remy swept and carried and was not allowed to touch a trowel until the inspector said he could. They built a low, curbless shower floor that a woman walking after a stroke could cross safely, and they set my Italian porcelain in it, row by row.
Celeste moved in with me for three months while she sorted out her heart. We did not talk about her husband very much. We talked about her father, and the way he used to hum Blessed Assurance in the garage. One night she said, “Mama, I should have told you to call the police the day I saw the bucket.” I told her the saying of it was enough.
On Thanksgiving morning I took my first bath in my own bathroom in eleven months. The water was warm and the stone was cool under my hand, and I sat there longer than I should have, and I did not care. I thanked the Lord and I thanked Lucien, who had hidden a letter in a floor to look after me from beyond the grave.
I went to church that Sunday and lifted the lid of the organ bench for the first time since 2021. Under the old hymnals there was a pencil, a folded bulletin, and a peppermint, still wrapped. Pastor Joel played Great Is Thy Faithfulness, and the choir stood, and I sang every verse with my cane tucked under my seat.
Remy comes by on Wednesdays now, in an old pickup with no gold letters on the door, and cuts my grass. He does not ask for anything. I make him a plate. We eat on the porch and watch the afternoon go by, and sometimes he says the name of my husband out loud, just to hear how it sounds.
