Part 3 — The Padlock
Pearl turned the yellow tape over so I could read Roys block letters on the back, and my eyes filled before I could finish.
“This key opens the padlock on the red tool chest in the garage. Under the bottom tray. For Hazel and the first grandchild.”
Kiana stood at the foot of the porch steps, very still. Her boyfriends car was already gone from the curb.
I asked Pearl to come with me, and Pearl asked the four church ladies to wait on the porch. The two of us walked into my garage, past the empty hook where Roy used to hang his jacket.
The red chest was where he left it. The lock was rusted a little, but it turned.
I lifted out the top tray, the second tray, and the third. In the bottom, in a clear plastic folder, lay a certificate of deposit and a letter. The certificate was in the name of “Wyatt Roy Calloway, by Hazel Calloway, custodian,” for twenty-seven thousand dollars.
Roy had bought it the week before his heart gave out, thinking only of a grandchild he hoped one day to meet. He had not known the boy would be named for him.
My husband assembled a crib with an Allen wrench and a Coke, and at the same time he built a quiet bank account for a baby he would never hold.
The letter said, “Hazel, if the baby comes and Kiana is not herself, the money stays with you. Do not let her touch it until she is well. I love that girl and I do not trust her yet. Wait for the day she asks to be trusted.”
I read it to Kiana on the back porch. I held it out so she could see his handwriting for herself.
She read the last line twice and slid down onto the step. “Daddy knew.”
“He knew you could come back,” I said. “And so do I.”
That week we met with the lawyer at the family court. I would keep custody of Wyatt, and Kiana would have supervised visits twice a week. If she completed a treatment program and stayed clean for a year, the court would review it.
She entered a residential program in Columbia on the first of June. She cried when she got in the car, and so did I.
Pearls son brought the crib back to the house, polished and screwed together. I set it in the corner of my bedroom, where the four little dents in the carpet had been.
That night I rocked Wyatt and sang Jesus Loves Me with his name put in, and he grabbed my bottom lip with his whole fist.