Chapter Twenty-One
The good thing,” Liz said, putting on her signal, “is that the hospital is only eleven minutes away.”
I loved Liz. But it was the third time she’d said this since we’d gotten in the car to head home.
“It’s so funny how I remember!”
She was telling the story again?
“When Mom insisted on living in the Woods even after her broken hip,” she began, the words so familiar by now, I probably could have said them in unison, “I was a nervous wreck. The only thing that made me feel better was how close Bly General was.”
Travis clocked it for her, I thought.
“Travis was the one who clocked it,” she continued, “door to door. Eleven minutes. It literally helped me sleep at night.”
I was waiting for the next part—about how after all that, they’d never had to call an ambulance, my grandmother moving to assisted living before she began to truly decline—when her phone buzzed on the console between us. As she grabbed it, the turn to the lake came up ahead. Right at eight minutes.
It was Liz who had driven me to the hospital earlier, following the ambulance. Kasey and Lana were behind us in the truck, while Clark and Ben hung back to help finish up the sale. For something so important just an hour earlier, though, now it was the last thing on my mind.
It had been bad enough seeing my mom down, weakened. Sitting in the small ER waiting room in a plastic chair with no updates was even worse.
“… to loop in her doctor in Timlee,” Kasey was saying. She and Liz were huddled by the nurses’ desk. Of course they knew the guy on duty. “I’ll contact her assistant. Maria?”
Marella, I thought.
“Marella,” Liz said. “I’m sure it was just the heat. And she’s barely been eating.”
I swallowed, going back to the blaring TV that hung overhead. Where they were doing a story about a local cancer fundraiser. Of course.
Lana, who was beside me, got to her feet and climbed up, changing the channel. Movie. Informercial for knives. More news. Finally, she landed on three women at a table, wineglasses between them, then climbed back down.
“You like Big New York?” she asked, settling in again.
I turned back to the TV. One of the women appeared to be angry. “It’s a show?”
“The best show.” I must have looked as skeptical as I felt, because she added, defensively, “What do you watch?”
Sports with Colin. Cartoons with my little siblings. Documentaries. “Not much,” I admitted.
Just then, I heard Liz’s voice. A doctor had joined her and Kasey. I started to get up, but before I could, he was pushing back through some double doors. They watched him go. Then Kasey put her hand over Liz’s and kept it there.
“Okay,” I said, turning back to the screen. “Fill me in.”
“Right.” Lana pointed a finger. “Leslie is on the left. Her BFF is Kika. That’s her in the fur shorts.”
I nodded. It looked like she was sitting on a squirrel. “Who’s the other one?”
“With the huge boobs and the tiny dog? Gretel. Her house has twenty bedrooms.”
Another ambulance pulled up, two paramedics jumping out. As they went around back, pulling out a gurney, I felt that lump in my throat again.
“Now, Leslie is on her third marriage, to Berkeley. He’s a celebrity Realtor,” Lana continued.
“He sells celebrities?” I asked.
“Ha. No. High-end properties to famous people,” she replied. “Kika is in a long-term relationship with an NFL player. But he won’t commit.”
“What about Gretel?”
“Sleeps around,” she replied. “Also, has a skin-care line.”
I nodded, trying to clear my throat. It came out more like a sob.
“Don’t cry,” Lana said, which only made it worse. “It’s a good skin-care line!”
And just like that, I was laughing. Somehow. At least until Liz walked over.
“Finley,” she said. “We can see her now.”
Only two of us, as it turned out, so Kasey and I followed another nurse down a winding, shiny corridor while Liz called Clark to give him an update. My mom was behind a curtain on a narrow bed, an IV drip in one arm. I’d worried about her looking weak, but instead she just seemed annoyed.
“So ridiculous,” she said when she saw us. Kasey immediately took the seat beside her, but I hung back. “I told you not to call an ambulance.”
“Cat, you passed out cold. I worried you’d hit your head.”
My mom rolled her eyes. “Is that why they’re insisting on all these scans?”
“Just let them do what they need to,” Kasey said. Then she gave a pointed look at the chair on the other side of the bed. I went and sat down.
“Do you have my phone?” As Kasey dug into her bag, finding it, my mom looked at me. “Finley, don’t worry. I didn’t eat, and then all that running around. It’s nothing.”
But I’d seen the expression on her face as she answered the paramedic’s questions. She might not admit it now. But I was not the only one who had been scared.
In the end, despite her protests and an attempt to go over their heads to her doctor in Timlee, they’d kept her overnight for observation.
Even though I’d sat there, listening as they discussed her condition, it was only certain words—“anemia,” “high white-blood-cell count,” “low blood pressure”—that remained in my head, like snow in a shaken globe.
Since she had to stay over, I’d figured we’d hang around and keep her company.
Liz had too, judging by the haul of sandwiches, chips, and water she returned with from the hospital café.
Instead, my mom had essentially kicked us out.
The last time I’d looked back at her, she was on the phone, her laptop at her elbow.
Take away the setting and nothing had changed. But setting, sometimes, is everything.
Now Liz and I were almost home, the food piled up on the console between us. I’d pounced on a questionable turkey sandwich as soon as I got in and already had regrets.
“Apparently, the sale ended without any further drama,” she said. “I’m trying not to think about some tourist in beachwear sprawled on Mother’s settee.”
This was a pretty specific image for not wanting to think about it.
“And Anne,” she continued, “held her ground at the fitting.”
“So she gets to keep her dresses?”
“The wedding dress,” she corrected me, checking the mirror to change lanes. “The bridesmaids from Jonathan’s side are still pushing about theirs.”
I felt a flicker of anger, hearing this. I thought of Kathy earlier, how smoothly she’d deflected Anne’s mention of the linen chest. Now I wished I’d bought it.
The Egg was in view now, the Woods mailbox before it on my right. As Liz slowed, turning in, I reached up instinctively to grab the handle over my window, holding on as we bumped over the tree roots and holes. When brush fell away, the lake appearing, I let out a breath, glad to see it.
Inside we found Lana and Kasey at the table on the porch, eating leftover pizza. Various items—the wooden box, the books, a quilted tablecloth—were stacked nearby, their Post-it notes still on them.
“How is she?” Kasey asked as soon as she saw us. “Any change?”
“Bossy as ever,” Liz replied. She pulled out a chair, sighing as she sat. “I really didn’t want to leave her there. No one should be all alone in the hospital.”
I blinked, hearing this. Should we have stayed?
Kasey glanced at me. “This is Cat we’re talking about,” she said, putting a slice in front of her. “We’re lucky to even know about it.”
Liz took a bite, then nodded glumly, not responding.
Lana, beside her, reached into the dollhouse, adjusting something. “Why is that?” she asked.
Kasey looked at me. “What?”
“Cat,” Lana replied. “Why doesn’t she like it here?”
“She does!” Liz said.
“Long story,” Kasey replied at the same time. A beat. She looked at me. “Maybe we shouldn’t get into this.”
“I’m fine,” I said, thinking how my mom had said they didn’t know. “I mean… she hasn’t really talked about it.”
“Oh, I understand that.” Liz sighed, taking another bite. She chewed for a moment. “You always want your kids to have the best opinions of their grandparents. Even if they weren’t the best parents to you.”
“Mom was fine,” Kasey pointed out. “Dad, however, expected total obedience from all of us, and especially Cat.”
“She was the favorite,” Liz added.
“Liz.”
“She was!” Liz looked at me. “Firstborn and just like him, really. They were two peas in a pod.”
Kasey wiped her hand along the table. “Until they weren’t.”
“So they had a falling-out,” Lana said.
“Which happens in families,” Liz added. “I mean, everyone has issues at one point or another.”
“True.” Kasey looked at me again. “That said, we never thought she’d just cut off contact with all of us.”
“Never,” Liz agreed. “But she did. Headed off to school and by the second year, that was it. Moved in with a guy we knew nothing about. Got married at city hall without even telling us…”
“Before having a baby Dad never got to meet,” Liz said, nodding at me. “And we only saw you twice, at the rest home and then Mom’s funeral. Of course, I always sent her letters and cards, and later emails. But we never really heard much from her.”
“Until a week ago,” Kasey said. “When she suddenly called us.”
“To say she was coming to sell the house!” Liz exclaimed, shaking her head. “For over a year I’d been trying to get her to look at this paperwork. Now she can’t do it fast enough.”
“At least we know why,” Kasey said. “Cancer makes things pretty immediate. From my experience.”
All at once, this was too much for me. I wanted my dad, the one adult I could still, always, be a child with if I needed to.
“You okay, Finley?” Liz asked as I pushed my chair back.
“Yeah. I just need to do something real quick.”
It wasn’t until I stepped into the mostly empty living room that I remembered the phone had been green stickered. After everything that day—the breakfast rush, the crowded sale, my mom’s collapse—it was this that made me feel like bursting into tears.
I swallowed, hard, then went into my room to gather myself. Moonlight was coming through the Bone Breaking window, partially lighting up my bed. On it sat the house phone, cord wrapped neatly around it. Also, two Post-it notes. One said, SOLD. The other: BEN.
In the living room, I stuck the line into the wall. When I lifted the receiver, there was a beat where I thought maybe it had gotten broken or something. Then came the dial tone, loud like a crack in my ear. I dialed my dad’s number and waited to connect.