I didn't sleep well that night.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Zach sitting at my table with my bank account open on his phone.
I had raised him to speak up when something seemed wrong.
I had taught him to be careful.
I had not taught him that being careful gave him permission to humiliate his mother.
At breakfast, I sat alone and watched the sunlight move across the kitchen floor.
Dwight's chair stood beside the window.
The porch light Wendell had repaired was visible through the glass.
It was still working.
I looked at it longer than I needed to.
Then I made myself a cup of coffee and tried to get on with my day.
I had been a nurse for thirty-four years.
I had worked overnight shifts, held pressure on wounds, helped frightened families understand what doctors were saying, and learned to keep my hands steady when other people were falling apart.
I wasn't proud of every decision I had ever made.
But I knew I was capable of thinking clearly.
At least, I thought I was.
The trouble was that Zach's accusation had found a place in my mind.
Once the idea of a hidden wife was there, I couldn't pretend I had never considered it.
Why wouldn't Wendell let me visit?
Why did he always seem tired?
What was he doing with all that paint and sawdust?
I could invent innocent answers.
I could invent troubling ones, too.
Neither helped me sleep.
On Tuesday afternoon, my phone rang.
It was Megan, my daughter, calling from Longview.
She asked how I was doing.
I told her I was fine.
She paused.
I knew that pause.
It was the one she used when she had called for a reason but didn't want to say it outright.
Then she mentioned her brother.
Zach had spoken to her about Wendell.
He had told her he was worried about me.
He had said I was making myself vulnerable.
Megan's voice was gentler than his, but the concern was there.
She asked whether I had thought about the possibility that Wendell was taking advantage of me.
I told her he had never asked for money.
She said that wasn't always how these things began.
I looked down at my hands.
They were older hands now.
There were small brown spots on the backs of them, and my fingers ached when the weather changed.
I had spent most of my life caring for other people.
It was difficult to hear my own children speak as if I could no longer recognize danger.
I asked Megan what she thought I should do.
She didn't answer immediately.
Then she said she believed I was lonely.
She said loneliness could make a person overlook things they might otherwise question.
I knew she was trying to protect me.
That did not make the words easier to hear.
After we hung up, I sat at the kitchen table for a long time.
The house seemed unusually quiet.
I could hear the refrigerator motor starting and stopping.
Somewhere outside, a lawn mower was running.
I thought about Dwight.
I thought about the years we had spent together and the small, ordinary things that had made up our marriage.
He had known how I liked my coffee.
He had known that I worried when the weather turned bad.
He had known I preferred to finish washing dishes before sitting down for the evening.
Losing him had taken away more than a husband.
It had taken away the person who knew my routines without needing an explanation.
Wendell had begun to fill some of that empty space.
Not all of it.
I wasn't foolish enough to believe anyone could replace Dwight.
But Wendell's quiet attention had made the days easier.
Now I wondered whether I had been too grateful for it.
Perhaps Zach was right.
Perhaps I had mistaken simple kindness for something more because I wanted so badly to be seen as a woman again instead of somebody's widowed mother.
That thought made me ashamed.
Not because I was old enough to know better.
Because I had begun judging myself by the same harsh standards my children were using.
That evening, I went to bed early.
I woke at two in the morning.
The house made its usual nighttime noises.
The pipes clicked.
The refrigerator hummed.
A branch brushed against the outside wall when the wind moved.
I lay on my back and stared into the dark.
For a while, I tried to imagine what I would say if I confronted Wendell.
I could ask him about the house.
I could tell him I wanted to see where he lived.
I could ask whether there was somebody else.
But I knew how that conversation might go.
He could tell me I was being unreasonable.
He could offer another promise.
He could say he needed more time.
And I could find myself accepting it again because I didn't want to lose the only new companionship I had found since Dwight died.
I turned onto my side.
Then I remembered the yellow paint.
It had been on Wendell's hands, not on some expensive tool or a new truck.
I remembered the sawdust on his clothes.
I remembered how he had fallen asleep in Dwight's recliner as if his body had finally reached the end of what it could manage.
A man who wanted to take my money could have found easier ways to spend his Sundays.
He could have complained about bills.
He could have asked for help.
He could have tried to persuade me to buy him something.
Wendell had done none of those things.
That didn't prove he was honest.
I knew better than to confuse a lack of evidence with proof.
But I also knew that Zach's theory didn't explain everything I had seen.
I had spent my career noticing what people did when they thought nobody was paying attention.
The details mattered.
Sometimes the smallest physical sign told you more than a person's explanation.
I decided I needed to stop imagining answers and start looking for facts.
By morning, the decision had settled in.
I would give Wendell a little more time to explain himself, but I would not let this continue indefinitely.
If he was hiding a wife, I needed to know.
If he was hiding something else, I needed to know that, too.
And if my children were right, I needed to face it before I lost more than my pride.
I didn't tell Zach what I was thinking.
I didn't tell Megan.
I went about my usual routine.
I made the bed.
I washed a few dishes.
I put a load of laundry in the machine.
Then I waited until Sunday.
Wendell arrived carrying a paper bag of rolls.
He set them on the counter and asked how my week had gone.
I told him it had been a long one.
He looked at me for a moment.
He was good at noticing when I wasn't telling him everything.
I wondered whether that was because he paid attention or because he had something to hide himself.
We ate supper.
He asked about my knees.
I told him they were bothering me more than usual.
He suggested I put my feet up after the meal.
I nearly laughed.
He had fallen asleep in my chair the previous week, and now he was telling me to rest.
Still, I appreciated the concern.
After dinner, he helped me carry the dishes to the sink.
He washed while I dried.
For a few minutes, we worked without speaking.
Then I decided to ask.
"Wendell, when am I going to see your place?"
He stopped with a plate in his hands.
It wasn't a long pause.
It was long enough.
He set the plate down carefully.
He said he was still working on it.
I asked what needed doing.
He glanced toward the window.
He told me there was more to finish than he had expected.
I waited.
He looked back at me and said he wanted to get everything in order before inviting me over.
I asked whether he was ashamed of the house.
He looked almost startled by the question.
"No, Winnie. It's not that."
I asked whether someone else lived there.
His expression changed.
For the first time since I had known him, I saw something like hurt cross his face.
He said he had no wife waiting for him at home.
I believed that he meant what he said.
But I still didn't understand why he would not let me see the place.
He dried his hands on a dish towel.
Then he told me he needed a little more time.
I could have pressed him.
Instead, I looked at the man standing beside my sink and realized that I was tired of guessing.
I told him I could wait a while longer, but not forever.
He nodded.
He didn't make another promise.
That was the end of the conversation.
When he left, I stood on the porch and watched his truck disappear down the street.
The repaired light above my head was still glowing even though the sun had not fully gone down.
I thought about how much effort it took to fix a small thing that had been broken for months.
Then I went inside and closed the door.
I wasn't ready to give up on Wendell.
But I wasn't willing to ignore my own questions anymore, either.
Click here to continue reading: PART 3: The Man Who Remembered My Mother’s Yellow Kitchen Still Kept His Own Door Closed, and I Began to Need an Answer
My Son Thought the Widower at My Sunday Table Wanted My Money, but I Had Noticed Something He Couldn’t Explain
Part 2 of 8
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