Part 3 — The Letter D
The number under the letter D belonged to Dante Willis, nineteen years old, the grandson of Mr. Willis next door. I had written it in my own hand on the inside of my kitchen cabinet two summers ago, next to the number for the plumber and the number for the church office. He mowed my grass every Sunday afternoon while I was at church, and I paid him thirty dollars and a slice of pound cake.
I thought of the message about the gas can, and my heart went into my throat. Ms. Tremaine read it aloud again in the glass office, with Wade and Jolene sitting across the desk. “Gas can is in the shed. Back door is open Sundays during church.” Then she looked at me over her glasses. “Miss Bernie, I need you to tell me what that means. Is there a gas can in your shed?” “Yes,” I said, in a very small voice. “For the lawnmower.”
That was all it meant. I want to say it clearly, because I had lain awake in that bank lobby building a terrible story out of a few small words. Dante used the can in my shed to fill the mower, as he had for two summers. He opened the back door with the key I gave him so he could get a glass of water on hot afternoons, and he locked it again when he left. He told Wade this in the group message because Wade, posing as a helpful nephew, had asked him when the house would be empty.
Nobody had meant to burn anything. What Wade and Jolene wanted was the silver, the jewelry in the box on my dresser, and the envelope of cash I kept in the cookie tin, all of it carried out through the back door on a Sunday morning while I sat in the third pew with my church hat on. The messages laid it out like a grocery list. It was a plan to steal from me, not a plan to hurt me. I have never been so relieved to be robbed. The scariest words in the world can turn out to be a boy telling the truth about a lawnmower.
Ms. Tremaine telephoned the Willis house, and Dante arrived that afternoon in his school hoodie with his grandfather beside him. He was white as a sheet. “Miss Bernie, I thought he was your nephew,” he said. “He said he was helping you pack up and that you wanted it to be a surprise. I swear on my mother.” He started to cry, a tall boy crying in a bank chair. I believed him. I put my hand on his sleeve and told him to tell the officers everything he knew.
The security guard held Wade and Jolene until Mobile police arrived, and Wade did not say a word as they led him away in his camo cap. They were charged with exploitation of an elderly person, conspiracy to commit burglary, and misuse of a power of attorney. Jolene pleaded guilty in the winter and received probation and an order to repay every dollar. Wade received eighteen months and the same repayment order.
The bank restored the $19,750 to my account within the month, after the review, and the court ordered Jolene to repay the bank over time. The bass boat with the Mercury motor was sold at a sheriff auction in the spring. I did not go and watch. I was getting my hair done by a girl at the shop on Dauphin Island Parkway, and I told her every detail from the safe end of the story.
Jolene sat in the corner of the lobby that morning in her Michael Kors purse and her acrylic nails like steak knives, and for once she did not have a word to say. Then she looked at me across the carpet. “Mama, I am sorry,” she whispered. I looked at my daughter for a long time. “Baby, I know you are,” I said. “Come and see me when you can say it without a lawyer in the room.” A bank is a strange place to be a mother, but I have done it.
The deadbolt I put on my bedroom door with a butter knife is still there. A locksmith came and installed proper ones on the front door and the back. Dante asked me to take his key away, and I thought about it and said no. I gave him new rules instead. He mows on Saturdays, his grandfather waits on the porch with a glass of tea, and he gets paid forty dollars now. Trust that has been tested is worth more than trust that never has.
My grandson set the old iPad up with a safe backup so I can never lose what is on it. I still keep it wrapped in a dish towel in the Crock-Pot on the top shelf of the pantry, because a woman has the right to be sentimental about the device that saved her. Sometimes at night I take it out and watch the old messages scroll past, and I feel like someone who has walked through a dark house with a flashlight and come out the other side.
On Sundays I go to church in my best hat, and when I come home, the back door is locked, and then it is unlocked, and then it is locked again. That is the sound of a boy at work. I stand at the kitchen window with a glass of sweet tea and watch the mower go back and forth across the grass in neat stripes. There is a smell of cut grass and gasoline, and it is the best smell in Mobile.
