"Grandma knows."
"Yeah," said Daria, and looked out the window toward the hospital. "Grandma knows. I guess I'm going to have to ask her. While she still remembers." She was quiet. "I guess that's going to be a lot of conversations."
"Are they still good?" Ludie asked Bonner. "The money things. Mom says they're so old."
"Postal money orders don't expire," Bonner said. "There's a fee on the old ones. But they're good. They were always good. They're just paper until somebody decides what they're for."
Daria nodded slowly. "I haven't decided," she said. "I want to be honest with you. I don't know if I'm going to cash them. Part of me wants to burn every one of them in the yard. Part of me wants to cash them all tomorrow and buy Ludie a college fund and a used truck and a dishwasher, and never think about you again. Part of me wants to give the whole thing to the Mt. Wheeler lineman's fund in my dad's name and let it be about him, finally, instead of about the two of you." She shook her head. "I'm going to sit with it. Mom sat with it for thirty-one years. I figure I can have more than a weekend."
"Take as long as you need," he said. "It's yours. It always was."
"I know it is. She told me." Daria turned the cardboard cup in her hands. "And the other thing. Coming back. Once a month."
He did not move.
"She asked me again this morning. She didn't remember asking me last night, so she asked me again, the whole thing, the terrible chair and the useful things, word for word, almost. And I realized she's going to keep asking me. Every morning, maybe. Until she forgets you, or she doesn't." Daria looked up at him. "So I'm going to say yes. But not because of you. Because I don't want to tell my mother no every morning for the rest of her life. That's the reason. You understand? It's a selfish reason."
"It's a good reason."
"There are rules. I'm in the room. Always. If she gets upset, you leave. And you don't send any more money to the house. Not to her, not to me. If you have to send it somewhere, send it to the lineman's fund. I'll give you the address. And you don't call Ludie. You don't write Ludie. If Ludie wants to talk to you, she talks to you in that room, with me there."
"Yes," he said. "All of it."