I stand-a scarecrow lost in the middle of the street. I fumble out the front door, trip over my books still piled by the mailbox. I sit in the desk chair, my head down, and listen to Mama and Daddy’s old anniversary clock on the mantel chop the silence to bits. With one simple slice I could know the truth. I retrieve the envelope and hold it to the light, but I can’t see through. I squeeze my eyes shut to crush the scene and try to breathe.Ī family of wrens chatters in our lilac bush, unaware that my family of two is about to become one. I picture his coffin in the parlor, just like hers almost ten years ago. My worst fear, that I am going to lose him the way I did Mama, is sealed in that envelope. The gaping black hole of our fireplace stares at me. He went to a doctor in another town to protect me from the bad news, to avoid the Atchison party line, the gossip.
I slide the letter under the mail-order catalogs on his desk and sit on the edge of the divan. Up and down our street is empty and deathly still, like my heart. I drift up our endless front walk, turn a slow circle on the porch before I open the front door. An official letter for Daddy from a doctor. I pull my hand from our mailbox, the letter bent in my fingers, my mind reeling.
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