PART 5 — FINAL
They kept me overnight.
Nora’s heartbeat settled around 140, and my pressure came down to 122 over 78 by two in the morning.
Elaine sl*pt in the recliner beside my bed with her handbag on her lap.
Around three, I woke up and found her awake, looking at the dark window.
“I raised him,” she said, without turning.
“I taught thirty-one years of other people’s children not to copy.”
“And the one I couldn’t see was the one at my own table.”
“Elaine.”
“I’m sorry, Anna.”
I reached across the blanket and took her hand.
“You asked what I needed,” I said.
“Nobody else did.”
“You showed your work.”
She pressed my knuckles to her forehead, and neither of us said anything else.
Judith Abbott came the following Monday with a thermos of tea and a smaller folder.
“We can trace where nearly all of it went,” she said.
“Online betting, mostly.”
“The rest bought the watch, some furniture, and a down payment on a truck.”
She slid a paper across the table.
“There is still $62,600 in the trust. It was never touched.”
“And the house?”
“The house on Linden Street is still yours,” she said.
“The tenants’ lease ends in March.”
“Your grandmother also kept a storage unit in Ames.”
“Mr. Keller never opened that envelope.”
Two days later, Elaine drove me to a gray metal door off Highway 30.
Inside, under a dust sheet, sat a black Singer sewing machine with gold lettering, a pattern box, and a wooden spool rack.
The pattern box was labeled in my grandmother’s handwriting.
FOR ANNA’S GIRL.
I sat down on a folding chair and cr*ed for a long time.
Elaine sat on the concrete floor and waited.
Nick’s case moved faster than anyone expected.
Greg Dolan agreed to testify in exchange for a lighter sentence.
The bank’s fr*ud office spent six months reviewing its own failure to question eleven large transfers, and it eventually returned $74,000.
The Rolex was sold.
So was Nick’s retirement account.
In January, he pleaded guilty to forg*ry, identity th*ft, and th*ft in the first degree.
The judge ordered full restitution, mandatory treatment for his gambling, and five years in prison.
Nick looked at me once from the defense table.
He did not say my name.
He did not have to.
I filed for divorce the same afternoon.
Tara testified, too.
She sat in the witness chair with a belly so round that the clerk brought her a pillow.
She told the court about the three thousand dollars, and the box in her closet, and the shopping bag of T-shirts she had carried into a hosp*tal hallway.
When the prosecutor asked why she had agreed to wear the recorder, she answered in a voice so small the judge asked her to repeat it.
“Because my brother told me that Anna needed less than I did,” she said.
“And I knew he was wrong.”
The next morning she returned the Louis Vuitton Neverfull, and Elaine passed the $1,950 refund to the restitution fund.
Tara moved into Elaine’s spare room.
She found a job at a pediatric clinic’s front desk.
In December she gave birth to a seven-pound boy named Owen.
Priya Nair stood in the hosp*tal doorway holding a bag of newborn onesies.
“Staff donations,” she said, handing them over.
“For the ones who forget they’re human.”
Tara laughed and cr*ed at the same time, and so did I.
Before all of that, on October 24, I wore the dress.
The weather was perfect, one of those gold afternoons Iowa saves for the very end of fall.
We drove to the lake with the photographer, Dana, and a cooler of sandwiches.
Tara held the reflector.
Elaine held my elbow over the muddy grass.
I put on the sage-green dress, with its flowing skirt and its delicate belt, and I was thirty-six weeks pregnant, and my feet were swollen, and I did not feel tired at all.
The wind caught the hem.
Dana called out, “Look at the water, Anna! Look at your baby!”
So I did.
For the first time in months, I let myself feel beautiful.
Tara cr*ed behind the reflector.
Elaine pretended she wasn’t cr*ing, too.
I opened the first picture and stared at it for a very long time.
A woman in green, her hand spread across her belly, laughing at the lake.
Nora arrived on November 28, at 39 weeks, with a full head of dark hair and an opinion about everything.
I counted her fingers.
Elaine counted them twice.
In March, when the tenants moved out, we packed the car and drove to Ames.
The house on Linden Street smelled like old wood and lemon oil.
My grandmother’s sewing room still had its yellow curtains.
I set the Singer on the table by the window and threaded it with my hands shaking.
The needle hummed up and down, and the machine’s old motor purred as if it had been waiting.
The first thing I made was a hem.
