Part 3 — Bea Settles Up
Darla set her champagne glass down so hard the stem rang. The band had stopped, and 120 guests were watching a woman in a gold gown search for her voice.
“Nineteen ninety-four,” Bea said, as calmly as if she were reading a menu. “You were seventeen, working my coat check on Saturday weddings. One night the gift envelopes from a young couples table went missing. $3,100. I knew it was you. I did not call the sheriff. I had you sign a promissory note instead, and I kept it in my safe for thirty years.”
Madison turned to her mother. “Mom, is that true?”
“I was a child,” Darla said.
“You were,” Bea answered. “And I let you be one. But tonight you sent a seventy-three-year-old woman an $85 invoice for a chair at her own grandsons wedding. I decided that note had waited long enough.”
She did not ask for a penny of it for herself. “Here is what I want, Darla. Say the number out loud. Then give back the one thing you took from Lorraine, which is her dignity.”
Darla looked at the pink invoice in her hand. She tore it in half, then in half again, and pressed my $85 check into my palm. Her voice shook when she said she was sorry, and this time she said it into the microphone, where everyone could hear.
Then she wrote a check for $3,100 to the scholarship fund at Georgia Southern, in the name of my late husband. Bea marked the old note paid in full and handed it back to her without another word.
Tyler crossed the dance floor and took my arm. Madison gave me her chair at the head table and hugged me so tightly my pearl buttons pressed into my ribs. Respect is not a line item, and no family should ever send a bill for a seat at its own table.
When the toasts began, Tyler spoke first. He told the room about the lunches I packed, the Little League bleachers, and the bass boat I sold so he could start college. Half the guests were crying before he finished.
Bea quietly told Darla that she was welcome at Magnolia Hall as a guest, seated wherever I decided. Darla chose a seat near the kitchen door and stayed there, humbled, for the rest of the evening.
Later Bea and I danced slowly, one cane against the other. The staff moved the little Table 19 card into the center of the room and wrote on it in gold ink: Reserved for Nana.
