Chapter 7

There were one hundred and thirty-one stubs in the box.

Ora Dell laid them out in rows on the kitchen table, oldest to newest, eleven years of them, each one a money order bought at the post office in Marlow and mailed to Wren County Animal Control, Angel Fund. Twenty dollars some months. Fifty, when the church paid her for a funeral luncheon. Once, a hundred and twenty, the month she sold Raymond's truck tires.

Every one of them signed in the corner the same way.

R.D.S.

Raymond Dale Sizemore. Her husband's initials, in her handwriting, because the first one she ever sent was the week he died and she hadn't been able to write her own name that month. She'd signed it the way she'd signed everything for thirty-one years - his. And then she'd never stopped, because the lady at the post office in Marlow didn't know her, and because a name with initials on it doesn't get thanked, and Ora Dell had never once in her life wanted to be thanked.

The fund paid for vaccinations and spay vouchers. Lurlene had told her that years ago. The shelter's vet account at Barlow Animal Clinic was always running short, and Dr. Barlow kept carrying it, and Ora Dell kept mailing money orders, and Marlon Teague kept sliding forms across a counter and calling her a stray's owner.

She put her hand flat on the last stub but one, from last month. Forty dollars.

Then she took the last one out of the box and held it.

Eleven thousand dollars. Dated the second week of September, eleven years ago - the week Raymond died. She had bought it at the Marlow post office three days after the funeral with the money from the truck, and she had written the amount out in her careful hand, and she had folded it into an envelope, and then she had sat in this kitchen with the envelope in front of her and had not been able to mail it, because mailing it meant he was really gone and the last thing he'd asked her to do was done.

She had never told a living soul.

Sunday morning she went to First Methodist because she always went to First Methodist. She sat in her usual pew. And Marlon Teague, deacon, stood up during joys and concerns and asked the congregation to pray for a sister in the county who had gotten confused in her grief and was causing trouble for good people doing a hard job.

Forty heads turned a little, not quite looking at her.

Sissy Toler took her hand afterward and squeezed it. Nobody said a word.

Ora Dell drove home, and cut two heads of hair for the Fikes girls whose mother had not canceled, and ate a bowl of soup standing up at the sink.

At seven-fifteen that evening, Deputy Marcus Pell knocked on her front door and handed her a citation for animal neglect with a court date on it.

"Miss Ora Dell," he said, looking miserable. "I'm just serving it."

"I know you are, honey."

After he left she read it twice under the porch light. At the bottom, under the signature line, it said the complaint had been sworn by M. Teague, Director, Wren County Animal Control.

She folded it and put it in her purse next to the implant card.

Tomorrow night, she decided, she was bringing the box.