Seven Checks Left Untouched in a Cedar Desk Drawer

He did not answer. He picked up the pine block and the sandpaper again, his fingers working with a sudden, tense energy.

On the small wicker table beside his porch chair lay the blue fountain pen my father must have left behind during his visit the night before.

I stared at the blue fountain pen Arthur used to sign the ledger, wishing I could read the ink that dried on the pages.

The walk back from my father’s office to the yellow house on Elm Street took twenty minutes, my shoes lifting the wet leaves from the sidewalk with every step.

By noon, the damp chill had settled into my collar, and I knew I could not sit alone in my apartment with the image of those monthly withdrawals burned into my mind.

I drove to my parents’ house, the heater in my small sedan clicking behind the dashboard but doing little to warm my feet.

My mother sat at the mahogany dining table, her fingers busy with a stack of cream-colored envelopes.

She did not look up when I let myself in through the side door, though she adjusted her posture, straightening her back against the high wooden splats of her chair.

“Mother, is Father paying Ben to marry Rosie?” I asked, the words falling flat in the quiet of the room.

She paused, her silver pen hovering an inch above the heavy paper.

She smoothed the front of her skirt with both hands, her palms making a dry, sliding sound against the wool fabric before she spoke.

“You are letting your own loneliness twist what should be a happy time for your sister,” she said, her voice clipping each word short.

She dipped her pen into the inkwell, her wrist perfectly steady as she wrote another name on an envelope.

“Ben loves her, Cathy, and we are simply helping them find their footing in their own home.”

“But the ledger,” I said, my right index finger continuously twisting the silver band I always wore. “The twenty-five hundred dollars every month, going back since April.”

She laughed, a short, dry chuckle that did not reach her eyes, and set her pen down with a small click.

“You have always had a wild imagination when you feel left out, dear.”

“I am not left out,” I said, though my throat felt tight and my face was burning under her gaze. “I am trying to understand why our father is writing checks to her husband.”