The payee was Markowski Landscaping and Design, LLC.
My brother-in-law Garys company. Janets husband. The man who had spent three years telling anyone who would listen that his wife was the one who really took care of her father.
Janet grabbed for the page because she knew what it was. Six thousand dollars had come back to the account when Dad died, because Oak Grove refunds the unused portion of a month. It should have gone to the responsible party, which was me. It did not, because a form arrived at the business office on March 27th, a day before the refund was cut, asking that any credit be redirected to a different payee. The form was signed Elaine Brandt.
It was my name. It was not my handwriting.
Cleo laid my real signature, from the admission agreement, next to the redirect form, and the whole table could see it. My capital E has a little loop on the top. The one on the form did not.
Janet did not say that it was not her. She said, Gary needed it for payroll. I was going to tell you. I was going to pay it back.
My uncle, Dads brother, said her name very quietly. He said, Janet Marie.
That was all. A man who was eighty-one years old and had carried Dads casket two days earlier said her name, and she put her glass down on a tablecloth that had not been hers to start with.
She had stood at our fathers casket and told a hundred and fifty people I could not be bothered, when the only person in that church who had been bothered for three years was the one she was talking about.
Cleo did what a business office is required to do. She reported the false redirect to the Wisconsin Department of Health Services and to the district attorney, as the law says she must, and she told us she would not be able to stop it even if we asked. I told her I would not ask.
The bank reversed the deposit. Gary, who had the check in his business account, returned the full six thousand dollars within the week and agreed to a plea on a misdemeanor charge for his part. Janet was charged with forgery. She pleaded to a lesser offense, with a year of probation, a fine, and restitution to Oak Grove for the cost of the investigation. There was no jail. There was a notice in the paper, and there was her church, where people stopped saving her a seat.
I took the refund and did something with it that Dad would have liked. I walked into Oak Grove with Ron on a Tuesday, the way I used to, and asked Cleo if the night aides had a fund. She said they had a coffee jar. I put three thousand dollars in the jar. The other three I gave to the aide who sings. Her name is Dolores, and she had held Dads hand on the last night when I was stuck in traffic on the Beltline.
Janet wrote me a letter. Three pages. She said she had been envious for three years of a sister who had the money, and the time, and the patience, and who never made a show of any of it. She said she did not have the right to ask for anything.
I wrote back one sentence. I said, Dad would have wanted us at the table. If you want to come, there is a chair.
She came at Thanksgiving. She brought the relish tray. She did not give a toast.