By Thursday, I had made up my mind.
I wasn't going to ask Wendell again.
I wasn't going to bring it up over supper or wait for him to decide I had earned an invitation.
I would go to his house.
I knew he lived somewhere beyond Ferris.
That was not much to go on, but it was more than nothing.
A few weeks earlier, he had written his address on a paper napkin in case I ever needed to reach him in an emergency.
I had tucked it away without thinking.
Now I needed it.
I began searching the kitchen drawers.
I checked beneath a pile of grocery receipts and an old instruction booklet for the microwave.
I found a rubber band, two pens that no longer worked, and a small flashlight with dead batteries.
No address.
I opened another drawer.
There were envelopes, takeout menus, and a stack of papers I had meant to sort through months earlier.
I moved them aside.
Still nothing.
For a moment, I wondered whether I had thrown the napkin away.
I could have called Wendell and asked him to give me the address again.
But I knew what would happen.
He would ask why I needed it.
I would tell him I wanted to visit.
He might offer another reason to wait.
And I might let him persuade me to postpone it again.
I was tired of hearing myself say that I would deal with it later.
I went to the junk drawer beside the telephone.
It was the sort of drawer every household seemed to have, full of objects that had no proper place but might become useful someday.
There were old keys, a small screwdriver, a roll of tape, and a phone book I had not opened in years.
I lifted the phone book.
The napkin was underneath it.
Wendell's handwriting was easy to recognize.
His letters leaned slightly to the right, and he had written the address in dark ink.
I stood at the counter reading it twice.
Then I folded the napkin and placed it in my purse.
I wasn't planning to confront him in the yard.
I wasn't planning to accuse him of lying.
I only wanted to see the house he had been talking about for months.
If there was a wife, I would know.
If the place was simply unfinished, I would know that, too.
And if there was some other reason he had kept me away, I would have to decide what it meant.
I slept better that night than I had in days.
Not because I had solved anything.
Because I had stopped waiting for someone else to decide when I was allowed to ask a question.
Thursday morning, I showered and put on a blouse I usually saved for occasions when I wanted to look presentable.
It was a good blouse, the sort that made me feel put together even when I wasn't.
I brushed my hair, checked my purse, and made sure I had my phone.
Then I stood in the hallway and looked toward Dwight's chair.
I almost told him where I was going.
The thought came naturally, as it sometimes did when I was about to do something I knew he would have an opinion about.
I swallowed.
Then I picked up my keys and left.
The drive took about forty minutes.
I followed the address through the roads beyond town, past open stretches of land and scattered houses set back from the pavement.
The farther I drove, the more I wondered whether I was doing something foolish.
I could still turn around.
I could go home, make lunch, and wait until Sunday.
I could tell myself that trust meant giving people time.
But trust was not supposed to mean pretending I had no questions.
I kept driving.
When I finally reached the road, I slowed down and checked the address again.
The house was small and white, with a simple frame exterior and a chain-link fence.
A large pecan tree stood nearby, its branches spread wide over the yard.
It wasn't the sort of place that suggested wealth or secrecy.
It looked ordinary.
That should have reassured me.
Instead, my stomach tightened.
I drove past the entrance once, then turned around farther down the road.
I didn't want to pull into the driveway without being certain I had found the right place.
The second time, I recognized the address.
There was no mistaking it.
I turned in.
The gravel crunched beneath my tires.
I saw Wendell's truck parked behind the house near a shed.
For a moment, I sat with both hands on the steering wheel.
The engine was still running.
I looked at the house.
The front windows were quiet.
No curtain moved.
No person appeared.
I tried to imagine what I would do if a woman came out and asked who I was.
I could say I was a friend.
I could say I had been worried.
I could turn around and leave.
My mind supplied one possibility after another, none of them helping me feel any better.
Then I noticed the garage.
The door was raised all the way.
I could see into the space beyond it.
A radio was playing country music.
The sound drifted out over the yard, thin and cheerful against the quiet afternoon.
I couldn't see Wendell from where I sat.
The garage door remained open.
I stared at it for several seconds.
Then I switched off the engine.
I had spent days imagining what I might find.
A second life.
A wife.
Some explanation that would make me feel foolish for having trusted him.
But the open garage didn't tell me anything about those possibilities.
It only told me there was something inside I hadn't seen before.
I got out of the car.
My shoes sank slightly into the loose gravel.
I shut the door gently, then stood beside the vehicle with my purse over one shoulder.
The air smelled of warm earth and cut grass.
I could hear the radio more clearly now.
A man's voice was singing about a road and a woman he had lost.
I started toward the house.
Every few steps, I considered turning back.
I thought about Zach's expression at my kitchen table.
I thought about Megan's careful voice on the telephone.
I thought about the possibility that I had allowed myself to become too trusting because I wanted someone to sit across from me at supper.
Then I remembered Wendell asleep in Dwight's recliner.
I remembered the coffee he had brought me without being asked.
I remembered the pale paint on his knuckles.
Those things did not prove anything.
But neither did Zach's suspicions.
I reached the garage.
The smell hit me first.
Fresh-cut pine.
Not the damp, stale smell of a place that had been neglected, but the clean, sharp scent of newly worked wood.
I slowed down.
Inside, there were tools and pieces of lumber arranged around the space.
The radio sat somewhere beyond my immediate line of sight.
I could hear the music, but I couldn't see anyone.
Then I noticed the wooden structure running from the garage floor toward the door that led into the house.
It was a ramp.
New lumber.
A broad, level surface.
Rails ran along both sides, positioned at a height where a person could grip them without reaching too far.
I stopped at the edge of it.
The boards looked freshly cut.
The edges were smooth.
The rails had been carefully fitted.
I moved closer and looked at the work.
There was no doubt that somebody had spent time building it.
I glanced toward the house door.
Then I looked back at the ramp.
The questions I had carried all the way from Seagoville were still with me.
But now they felt different.
I had come expecting to discover what Wendell was hiding.
Instead, I was standing in his garage, looking at a piece of work that had clearly been made for a reason.
And for the first time, I wondered whether the secret I had been chasing was not the one I had imagined at all.
Click here to continue reading: PART 5: The Ramp Was Too Carefully Built to Be Ordinary, and Suddenly I Was Ashamed of What I Had Come Looking For
My Son Thought the Widower at My Sunday Table Wanted My Money, but I Had Noticed Something He Couldn’t Explain
Part 4 of 8
