Chapter 24: Pecan Lane

We moved into the house on Pecan Lane in February.

On the first night, Judd put a long envelope on the kitchen table.

It held the assignment of the mortgage note, with the name on it changed from Low Country Notes LLC to mine.

"It's yours," he said. "Burn it, frame it, sell it."

I put it in the sideboard drawer where my mother used to hide the PAID envelopes.

Then I shut the drawer and left it there.

Clover took the room at the top of the stairs, and she had already labeled the refrigerator shelves.

On the first Sunday, my mother came to dinner.

I had invited her myself, by phone, in two sentences.

She stood on the porch in a navy coat with a casserole dish in both hands and a dish towel over the lid.

"It's tuna," she said. "I wasn't sure what you ate now."

"Hello, Mom."

"I won't stay long."

"You can stay as long as dinner takes."

She had taken a job selling gloves at a department store on Broughton Street.

She told me so in the front hall, quickly.

"It's dignified," she said.

"It is."

She looked at the walls she had painted and the stairs she had climbed for thirty years.

"It looks different."

"Clover moved the couch."

"Clover," my mother said, "moved the couch," and then, to my astonishment, she smiled.

We ate at the dining room table, six of us.

The lieutenant had come, too, with his wife, who was small and sharp and wore his ring on her hand.

They sat across from my mother and were polite to her without effort.

Clover told the story of the gas station carnations.

Judd took a bite of the casserole.

"Marlene," he said. "That was an excellent tuna."

My mother put her fork down.

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