She Stole Daddy's Surgery Money for Her Man

Tasha read it twice. Then she read it a third time, because her brain didn't want to understand it.

Fifteen hundred for the bail. Seventy-five hundred for the car.

Nine thousand dollars. To the penny.

"Pull over," she said.

"What?"

"Pull this car over, Travis."

He looked at her, then at the papers in her lap, and his whole face changed. He swung into a gas station parking lot so hard her head almost hit the window.

"Why you going through my stuff?"

"Why am I..." She held up the bail receipt. "The bail was fifteen hundred dollars, Trav. You told me it was nine thousand. You cried on the phone. You said they were going to send you to county."

"It was gonna be nine if I didn't..."

"You bought a car." Her voice was shaking. "With my daddy's surgery money. You bought a car."

Trav put both hands on the steering wheel and let out a long, bored breath, like she was the one being difficult.

"Okay. Yeah. I put a little down on the car. So what? I needed a ride. You want me taking the bus to job interviews? You want your man looking broke?"

"My father has a tumor."

"And he's got insurance!" Trav threw his hands up. "Tasha, baby, listen to me. That money was just sitting there. Doing nothing. Your daddy's seventy-something. What's he need nine thousand dollars sitting in a bank for?"

She stared at him like she'd never seen him before.

"To live," she said. "He needed it to live."

"Don't be dramatic."

"Take the car back."

He laughed. Actually laughed. "Girl, I'm not taking this car back. You know how long I waited for a car like this? It's in my name, anyway. Not yours. Not his. Mine."

Tasha took her phone out with shaking hands and called the dealership. A man named Rick answered. She explained everything as fast as she could. The money. The surgery. Tuesday.

Rick was quiet. Then he said, "Ma'am, I'm real sorry. The down payment's non-refundable unless the buyer brings the car back within seventy-two hours. And it has to be the buyer."

Tasha lowered the phone and looked at Trav.

"Seventy-two hours," she said. "You can still return it. Today. He'll give it back."

Trav reached over, took the phone out of her hand, and hung up on Rick.

"Get out of my car," he said.

"What?"

"You heard me. You want to go cry to your daddy, go cry to your daddy. Get out."

She sat there for one more second. Six years with this man. Six years of excuses. The job he lost because his boss "had it out for him." The rent she paid every month because his money was "coming." The ring on her finger he said cost him two paychecks.

She got out.

He didn't even wait for her to get her suitcases out of the trunk. The red car pulled out of the gas station with a loud, ugly roar, and her two suitcases and her trash bag full of clothes went with it.

Tasha stood next to pump number four in her pink sweatsuit with nothing but her phone and her purse.

She didn't call her father. She couldn't. She called her cousin Dee, who drove forty minutes to get her and didn't ask a single question until they were on the highway.

"So," Dee said finally. "You want to tell me why you're crying at a Shell station on a Saturday?"

Tasha told her. All of it.

Dee was quiet for a long mile. Then she said, "Your daddy drove that bus thirty-four years. Double shifts when your mama got sick. He put you through two years of college."

"I know."

"He's the only man who never lied to you, Tasha."

"I know."

"So what are you gonna do about it?"

Tasha looked down at her left hand. At the ring.

"Pull off at the next exit," she said. "There's a pawn shop by the Walmart."

The man behind the counter at Gold Star Pawn looked at the ring under a little magnifying glass for about five seconds. Then he slid it back across the glass.

"Cubic zirconia," he said. "Nice setting, though. I can give you forty bucks."

Dee put her hand over her mouth.

Tasha just stood there. Two paychecks, he'd said. He'd gotten down on one knee at Red Lobster and said it cost him two paychecks.

She took the forty dollars.

Meanwhile, on Sunday, Henry sat in the third pew at Greater Mount Zion like he had every Sunday for forty years. He didn't ask anybody for anything. He wasn't raised that way. He sang the hymns, he shook the pastor's hand, and he went home and sat in his recliner and waited for Monday.

At ten fifteen on Monday morning, his phone rang. The hospital.

He closed his eyes and got ready to hear the words six to eight weeks.

"Mr. Mitchell? This is billing at St. Luke's. I'm calling to let you know your balance has been paid in full. You're all set for surgery tomorrow at seven."

Henry sat straight up in the recliner.

"Paid?" he said. "Paid by who?"