The Twelfth Child (Serendipity #1)(43)



“Then I’ll do without your help.” I could afford to talk sassy ‘cause I knew full well that once I’d asked her to do something, neither hell nor high water would keep her from it.

We dickered back and forth a bit, I offered to pay five-hundred dollars a month; she said she’d take fifty. Finally we settled on one-hundred and that’s when Destiny started writing my checks and taking care of whatever needed taking care of. A number of times when Elliott stopped by to tell me how down on his luck he was, I had Destiny write him out a check for five hundred dollars. “Just make it payable to cash,” he’d usually say and she’d do exactly as he asked.

I was pleased with such an arrangement because having a trustworthy person like Destiny to oversee things was worth a lot more than a few paltry dollars. It surely made my life easier and I’m certain having that extra money was a Godsend for her. Right off she bought herself a brand new Westinghouse microwave and a red fox coat that she planned to pay off in installments. I told her, “Destiny, you oughtn’t run up a bunch of finance charges, I’ll buy you that coat outright.” She just shrugged it off and said something about how paying on time didn’t bother her one little bit; then next thing I knew, she’d gone and bought herself a twenty-one inch television set on the installment plan. I was happy to see her get the nice things she deserved. All my life, I’d pinched and saved, always worrying about the future, then before I knew it, I was an old woman with not much future left to worry about and pitifully little to show for all the scrimping. If I had it to do over again, I’d live my life just the way Destiny does. She’s one person who won’t end up with a bunch of regrets about things she didn’t do.

As far as the money was concerned, I had more than I could live long enough to spend. There was still well over one-hundred thousand dollars in the Middleboro Savings Bank, and that wasn’t counting the bonds.

I wasn’t aware of those bonds when Scott Bartell settled up Will’s estate and if I hadn’t gone back to sorting through the boxes a few months later they might have been shipped off to the Salvation Army along with the rest of Will and Becky’s belongings. The bonds were in the very last carton, folded inside Papa’s worn out bible. United States Savings Bonds – ten of them, each one good for one-hundred-thousand dollars.

Right off I knew Will was the one who bought those bonds and I had to believe it was with the money he’d got for the farm. He claimed the United States Government was the only place a person could be sure their money was safe and if you thought otherwise he’d argue you blue in the face. Get him started and he’d go on and on about how he and Papa barely scraped through that first year of the great depression, when the Chestnut Ridge Savings Bank closed their doors and left a bunch of farmers standing in the street, wondering how they’d get the money to pay their bills. “Papa was one of those farmers,” Will would say and then he’d tell how they counted up pennies and made do with the nothing more than the food they grew. “That was the year Papa did not give one red cent to the MethodistChurch,” Will would say to emphasize his point, for everyone knew Papa thought not tithing was as much a sin as thieving or lying.

The day I found the bonds, I counted them at least a half-dozen times. I just couldn’t believe that anyone would pay so much money for a place that destroyed whole families. One-million dollars! It was a figure so big it got stuck in my throat if I tried to say it aloud but all I could think about was how Will and Becky had never gotten to take much pleasure from all those years of hard work. I cried for a long while, then I took the bonds out of Papa’s bible and hid them away for safekeeping.

After that, I pretty much willed the bonds out of my head. A wiser person would have considered their worth, but given the bitter way I’d left Papa and the farm they weighed heavy on my conscience, like an ill-gotten gain. Anyway, once Destiny started watching over my finances, I didn’t have occasion to think about them. For a person who was such a spendthrift with her own money, she was surprisingly careful with mine and would count up every penny. At the end of the month she’d open the checkbook and show how she’d paid the gas and electric, the insurance, the groceries, and such. “Now, this check for five hundred dollars cash,” she’d explain, “that was what we used for household spending money.”

“Destiny,” I told her, “You don’t have to account for what you spend,” but she did anyway. I don’t know if anybody else would have anticipated that her signing those checks could bring the poor child such heartache, but I can tell you, I surely didn’t.



I suppose there’s no right time to die; when a young person’s life is cut short it’s considered a tragic injustice and yet it’s almost as pitiful when old folks outlive their friends and relatives and are lowered into the ground with nobody to mourn their passing. I was luckier than most, I had Destiny. When somebody who was real special to you is broken-hearted because you’ve died, it makes you feel like your life counted for something after all. I would never have wished Destiny one minute of sadness, not as sweet as she’d been to me, but her caring so much did my heart good. After the funeral, she’d walk around my house and sniff at clothes I used to wear, pick up a book that I’d been reading, or cry at the sight of something I’d left out of place – the same kind of things I’d do after Mama died. Why, I can still remember how I got attached to Mama’s old apron and wore it ‘till it fell apart – it was like having a piece of Mama to hold onto a bit longer.

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