The blue Honda sat in my driveway with its engine ticking, and the door of the driver opened, and a man stepped out in a Rangers cap, with a slight limp on the left from his knee surgery in 2019. My husband. Dennis. The man whose urn stood on my mantel. I am Sharon Whitfield, sixty six years old, a part time librarian in Plano, and I got out of my car on shaking legs and crossed the street with my phone held up. He saw me when I was thirty feet away. He stopped, and the paper grocery bag in his hand dropped slowly to the pavement.
“Sharon,” he said. His voice was thinner than I remembered, and the hair beneath the cap had gone white. I could not speak, and I could not look away, and I could not feel my feet. Around us, the Plano afternoon went on, a lawn mower droning, a child on a scooter, a sprinkler ticking across the grass of the neighbor. Dennis took a step toward me and held out his hands. “Please,” he said. “Let me explain.” I stood perfectly still, and I said in the voice I use for the library story hour that he could explain to the detective, who was on her way.
He told me the rest in my own kitchen, with Detective Alvarez of the Plano police sitting at the end of the table and a recorder running. There had been no heart trouble in Atlanta. Dennis had been under investigation for two years for taking kickbacks from a pharmaceutical distributor, a sum of one million, two hundred thousand dollars, and a federal agent had called on him in January. His company, which was afraid of the publicity, had helped to arrange a quiet departure. The urn on my mantel was filled with ash from a fireplace.
A doorbell camera clip of a man with a key gave one librarian the length of a Tuesday afternoon to bring her husband back to the truth in Plano.
I gave my terms across my own kitchen table, with my hands flat on the wood. “Dennis Whitfield, I do not know whether I will ever forgive you. That is for later. Tonight, you will tell the detective everything, and give her the cash you have been carrying out of my house. You will tell the company, and the agent. You will return what you took from the people you cheated. And then you will tell me why you let me stand in front of that urn and cry for six months.”
Dennis lowered his head onto his crossed arms, and his shoulders shook. “Sharon, I was a coward,” he said, hoarsely. “I knew I would go to prison. I could not face you and the kids. A man at the company suggested that I could vanish, with the money from the safe and a few hundred thousand in an account, and start over in Arizona. I came on Tuesdays for the cash in the gun safe, because I had nowhere else to go. I watched you through the window one day. You were crying in the garden.” He wept. “I am the worst man alive.”
But he could not bear the sight of the handcuffs. Dennis suddenly seized the paper bag from the counter, the last of the cash, and bolted for the garage door, his bad knee dragging, meaning to take the Honda and run. He slammed through the door. Outside stood the neighbor who had sent me the clips, Mrs. Garza, with her phone raised. Two uniformed officers came up the driveway. And my son Michael, who had flown in that morning from Seattle, stepped out of his rental car.
Dennis halted in the driveway, in the golden light of the late afternoon, with the grocery bag clutched to his chest and his own son standing in front of him with tears running down his face. Michael did not shout. “Dad,” he said, “I have spent six months being angry at the wrong person. Please stop running.” Dennis stood a long time with his mouth open. The bag slipped from his arms, and a bundle of twenties fell out onto the concrete. He put out his hands, wrists together, to the officers.
The consequences were severe and orderly. Dennis pleaded guilty to fraud, tax evasion, and conspiracy, and he was sentenced to eleven years in federal prison. The company executive who had helped him was indicted. The money in the account, nine hundred thousand dollars, was recovered and returned to the pharmacies that had been cheated. I kept the house, which was in my name alone. In a quiet ceremony in the garden, I scattered the fireplace ash under the rosebushes, and Michael held my arm.
In the name of my mother Evelyn, who passed in 2005, I started the Evelyn Mason Fund. It pays for legal help and counseling for families of white collar crime and for free library cards, books, and story hours for children in need, in Collin, Dallas and Denton counties. In the first year we counseled two hundred and twelve families and put twelve thousand books into the hands of children. One was a six year old boy in McKinney who opened a picture book on the floor of the library and read the first line aloud, proudly, to his mother.
On a mild Tuesday afternoon in April, I sat at the front desk of the Plano library at one o clock, stamping returns with the little silver stamp, while the sun came through the tall windows and the story hour began in the next room. The door opened, and a young man walked in with a paper grocery bag. It was Michael, with sandwiches. He set the bag on the counter and grinned. “Mom,” he said, “you said you wanted Tuesdays at one to mean something good.” I cried again, but I laughed too, and the whole front desk turned to look at us, and old Mr. Pruitt at the newspapers gave us a thumbs up.
