Friday morning, my phone rang. “Hi, Mom,” Ezra said, in that careful tone men use when rehearsing a kindness that’s really a cut. “About tonight… I’m sorry, but my wife wants dinner to be just her family.”
Just her family.
As if forty-two birthdays, shoe-tying lessons, and feverish midnight math homework were an accounting error I could amend on Form 1040-X. The tax code does not tolerate mistakes or inaccuracies. I spent forty-two years as an IRS inspector in Carson City, and these principles are ingrained in my blood.
Today, when I look in the mirror, I see the same Abigail Tmaine. Gray hair pulled back in a tight bun, deep wrinkles around eyes and lips that almost never smile, arms with protruding veins, but still strong enough to dig a small vegetable garden behind the house by myself. Seventy-eight years old, and I still manage on my own.
My home on a quiet Carson City street is more than just walls. It’s a place where everything has its own meaning and story. The pictures on the walls tell of the life that once simmered here.
Wallace with his perpetual pipe. Little Ezra on his bike. Me in a strict suit against the backdrop of the IRS building.
Now the house seems too big for a lonely old woman. But I’ve never complained about it out loud. Complaining is not in my nature.
“Abigail Tmaine, the Iron Lady of the IRS,” is what my co‑workers called me. I can’t say I took offense to that. My reputation as a relentless inspector protected me from the world.
When you are a woman in the world of numbers and tax returns, it is better to be iron than soft. Softness is mistaken for weakness, and weakness is not respected in this world. Wallace was the only one who saw the real me behind that iron mask.
He worked for a construction company designing bridges and roads. We met when his firm was undergoing a tax audit. He didn’t try to charm me or bribe me like so many people did.
Instead, he argued with me about tax deductions with such passion that I couldn’t help but marvel. Six months later, we were married to the surprise of everyone who knew us. We lived together twenty‑eight years until lung cancer took him ten years ago.
“Smoked a pipe too much,” the doctor said. But I know it wasn’t just that. He was the kind of man who burns brightly but doesn’t last long.
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