The day after I moved into the blue house on Okinawa, my
daughter Sam found a plate of fresh peanut butter cookies on our
doorstep. Sam told me that they were from our neighbors, the
Threshers.
I got to know the neighborhood better, but I never found anyone
named Thresher in two years. I forgot about it until the
miscarriage. When I got home from the hospital, I found a
plate of brownies on the table with a pink rose—just like the ones
in our garden. The card read:
I know this may not be proper, but we
feel for you. Having longed for a child of our own for several
years, it nearly broke us when I lost John Junior.
Dottie.
I looked them up in the phone book, but no John or Dottie
Threshers lived near us.
I asked Sam if she remembered what they looked like. She
said they were a younger couple. That John wore a green suit
with funny ribbons, and Dottie had short brown hair and wore a
white dress with green polka-dots. She said they smiled a lot and
like making a mess of the kitchen.
After Mark left me—I guess I just couldn’t take losing the
baby, but it had to have been my fault—I found more packages of
sweets and flowers. Chocolate-chip cookies, snickerdoodles,
divinity, caramels . . . And letters from Dottie. Every time
I was on the verge of slitting my wrists and getting it over with,
I would find a letter from Dottie on the counter.
She spoke of losing their infant son, of her husband being
different when he came back from the war, of what losing him was
like. Even her writing could sway me—she must have had
beautiful hands to make such pretty letters.
Sam was visiting for the weekend—my weekend with her—I don’t
get the longer period because Mark said I wasn’t safe—she was
playing in the front yard with some neighbor kids, and I heard
screaming. I ran down the stairs, and God help me, I saw
this man push her into a car. I ran after the car, and I
threw a shoe at it and shattered the back window. But the
driver kept going . . .
More cookies. More letters of hope . . .
They found her body in a ditch twenty miles from my house.
More flowers. Letters of sympathy and condolences . . .
They know the offender. He’d kidnapped a five-year-old
ten years ago but had been released early on good behavior.
The state prosecutor says he’ll get a life sentence with no hope
of parole, but I told him that won’t bring my Sammy back.
I went home and went to bed. I guess I snapped this
morning . . . I went downstairs, intent on swallowing a bottleful
of Tylenol and sticking my hands in the blender . . . But laughter
distracted me. I could hear them—a man, a young woman, and a girl.
My Sammy. I tripped down the rest of the way and landed hard
against the wall of the kitchen.
They were just like Sam had described them—Dottie in her dress,
John in his Army uniform with medals and ribbons on the left
breast of his coat.
They must’ve been dead for fifty.
I hadn’t even thought the house was that old.
But at least I now know why I could never keep eggs on hand.
And why I’ll always keep them on hand from now on.
