She turned and sat down at her desk. I could hear her behind me. She was upset. She had begun to whisper in the direction of Betty Lucas.
I read what was on the paper. It was a brief notice. It had been written in pencil and the paper it had been written on had been folded many times, into small squares, and at the edges it was frayed and ragged as though she had been carrying it around in her pocket for a week waiting for the right moment to bring it in. Then I looked at Jessie. Her eyes were very brown and her cheeks were still red from having been outside in the cold. I thought she looked very beautiful. There were bits of dry snow on the shoulders of her blue coat.
“Yes,” I said. “I’ve heard your husband was gone. I suppose we’ve all heard that much. But I take it you haven’t heard from him yet either. Is that what this is about?”
“No. I haven’t heard from him.”
“Where do you think he is?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t any idea where Jack Burdette is.”
“You’ve notified the police, though?”
“Yes. But yesterday there was a bill in the mail.”
“A bill?”
“For some clothes he charged,” Jessie said. “So I called them back and told them they could stop looking for him. He isn’t lost.”
“I see,” I said. “I think I do, anyway.” Because it seemed obvious to me now, having read what she’d written on the piece of tablet paper, that she had come to a thorough understanding about the charges Burdette had made on Main Street and also about what those charges indicated about his disappearance. She hadn’t had to be present for the jokes and the talk in the bakery, or later to be there to hear the growing alarm people felt. She seemed to understand all too well what those things would mean to her as his wife in Holt.
I looked outside for a moment. On Main Street it was fully dark now. The streetlights had come on and it was snowing again. Behind me Mrs. Walsh and Betty Lucas had begun to put their coats on, preparing to go home for the evening. I waited until they had gone out through the back room into the alley. Then I turned back to Jessie.
“I wonder, Mrs. Burdette,” I said, “I wonder if you don’t think this is a little bit drastic? After all he might come back. Don’t you think? Maybe he’s just taking a vacation.”
“No,” she said. “I don’t think that. I’ve stopped thinking that. It’s been two weeks.”
“Yes. But two weeks aren’t a lifetime.”
“They’re long enough.”
“And so you still want me to print this in the paper? You do want that?”
She began to open her purse. “How much is it?”
“But wait a minute,” I said. “I haven’t said I will yet.”
She looked at me. Her eyes were very large and dark. I picked up the penciled notice once more, reading it again while she turned to see that the two little boys were still seated quietly on the chair behind her. They were watching her like little birds.
Finally I said: “Very well, then. I’ll agree to print this. Although I don’t think it will do you any good. In fact I’m afraid it will do you a great deal of harm in town.”
She still wanted it printed. So I took out a form from a shelf under the counter. I copied her note onto the form as she had written it and afterward she paid for it.
She began to prepare TJ and Bobby to go outside again. They sat solemnly in front of her while she knelt to zip up their snowsuits; she helped them pull their mittens on.
I was standing behind the counter, watching her. Her blue coat was smooth and neat across the hips and her hair looked dark and lovely. “Listen,” I said, “will you let me drive you and your boys home? I’m leaving now anyway.”
She looked out the front window. Outside it was worse: it was snowing harder and the wind was blowing the snow horizontally along the street. “If it’s not any trouble,” she said. “I don’t want them to get cold again.”