Chapter Fifty-Eight
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
SATURDAY
Germaine picks me up early, right after Amity and Wyatt leave for the train station.
She drives fast, which makes me even queasier than I already am.
But I don’t know if I want her to slow down, which would delay this meeting, or speed up so I can get it over with. I don’t even know if I want to go.
“Pull over,” I say.
“Are you going to be sick?” Germaine checks her rearview mirror as she starts to slow down.
“I don’t know if I can do this. My grandfather sounds awful. Do I want to meet him? Is this what my mother would want?”
Germaine stops the car on the shoulder.
“I don’t know, Cath. You seemed sure last night.”
I try to clear my head, to remember why I thought this made sense.
“I wanted to see him for myself, because I’m tired of being kept in the dark, of not knowing anything, of being left to figure out everything and everyone on my own.”
“Then it’s for you, not for your mother.”
“Right.” I press down on my thighs to stop them from shaking.
“So we proceed?”
“Yes.”
There’s still so much I don’t know. Was my mother in touch with her father? Did he reach out to her? Did he care? Does he know that she’s dead? I do not like the thought of having to deliver that information. He’s old. What if it kills him?
Germaine pulls into the parking lot of the Derby Oaks Care Home, a sprawling brick complex that reminds me of my bland, 1970s-era middle school. I get out of the car, but Germaine stays put.
“You’re not coming?”
“I assumed you’d want to do this alone.”
She’s right. I’m grateful for all the support, but I’ve had enough of my family’s history being Willowthrop’s favorite real mystery. I don’t want a witness.
The lobby smells like roast chicken and cleaning fluid. The walls are decorated with thick hooked rugs in swirling patterns of brown and green. I sign the register and follow a nurse down a long corridor.
“Ready?” Her smile is tight, forced.
I’m expecting a giant, an ogre, some kind of devil.
But when the door opens, there’s only a frail man sitting up in bed.
Everything about him seems insubstantial.
He has filmy eyes, wisps of gray hair on his head, and patches of white stubble on his gaunt face, like he’s used an electric shaver with a shaky hand.
He’s nearly eighty but looks older, maybe on account of living a hard life punctuated by too much drinking, smoking, and gambling.
His long, thin arms rest on a blue wool blanket.
“Good morning, George,” the nurse says, her voice cheery and loud. “This is your visitor. Your granddaughter.”
It’s so quiet I can hear the crackling of his breath. On the table beside his bed is a racing form and a calendar on the wrong month. On the wall is a framed painting on velvet of an oak tree in autumn. The colors are garish, almost fluorescent.
“I’m Catherine.” It comes out that way, the name my mother chose for me.
Has he heard what I’ve said? He stares at me, moving his mouth around like he’s got something stuck in his teeth.
“Granddaughter, eh?”
“Yes, Susan Marie is my mother.”
That sounds foreign; I feel like I’m talking about a stranger.
“You’re Sukie’s girl.”
“That’s right.”
“You’re a strapping thing.”
Gosh. I didn’t have that on my Bingo card.
“Not little like Sukie.”
“My dad was tall.”
“Huh.” His fingers flutter on the blanket. “Come closer.”
I’m reluctant to sit near him. I perch myself on the edge of the mattress.
“My mother wanted to bring me here. It’s my first time in England.”
“Is that right? Haven’t heard anything from her. Not for years and years. She didn’t write, not a word, so neither did I. So where is she, then? If she wanted to bring you here, why isn’t she here?”
His manner makes me less afraid to tell him.
“She had a stroke, last year. She wasn’t sick; it was sudden.” For the first time, I wonder if my mother’s stroke, which was so unexpected, was a long time coming, if burying her past took its toll.
“She’s in hospital, then?”
“No, she isn’t. Um, she died.”
He juts out his lower lip, moves it right and left. Looks away from me and starts coughing lightly, and then harder. He wheezes and gasps. I turn to the nurse. She pitches him forward, thumps on his back. Pushes the button to move his bed so he’s more vertical.
“Is he okay?” I ask.
The nurse sighs. “Some days are harder than others.” To my grandfather, she says, “There we go now, pet. You’re fine.”
He doesn’t look fine. He looks pained.
“She didn’t suffer,” I say. “It happened very fast.”
“My girl,” he whispers. He’s not looking at me. “Sukie.”
Is he crying? This isn’t what I wanted. I was going to be angry and strong.
Why isn’t my mother here? Why is this left to me, to tell him what’s happened to his own daughter?
I don’t want to cry here but can’t stop the tears.
I wipe my nose with the back of my hand.
This is all wrong, all of it. I have so many questions: How could he send away his own daughter?
Why didn’t he write to her? Why did she stay away for so long? But I can’t bring myself to ask.
“In the drawer,” he says, waving a hand toward his night table. “My wallet.”
What the hell? Is he going to give me money?
“I don’t need—”
“Get my wallet,” he croaks.
I find the wallet, cracked leather, and give it to him.
His hands are shaking. It takes him a while to slide something out.
It’s a photograph, frayed on the edges and crinkled, like it’s been in there for a long time, maybe since shortly after it was taken.
A family in front of a small stone house.
George, with a full head of hair and a muscular body, his arm around Ann, who’s leaning against his shoulder and smiling at the camera.
Her hair is swept back off her face, but I can tell it is thick, like mine.
She’s holding the hand of a little girl in a sleeveless shirt and shorts.
It’s a beautiful picture and it is horrifying. A portrait of all that was lost.
“Take it,” he says. His eyes are watery, his lips quivering.
“I can take a photograph of it with my phone, and you can keep it,” I say.
“I want you to have it.” He watches me put the photograph in my bag. “She was better off there. Cheeky thing. She was better off.”
“I don’t know,” I say. “I know nothing about it.”
As I’m trying to figure out what to say, he rests his head on the pillow and closes his eyes. His breathing slows into a steady rhythm.
“He tires easily,” the nurse says. “Do you want to come back later?”
“I don’t think so.”
I tear off a blank edge of the racing form and take a pen from my bag.
I write down my name and address and phone number.
I can’t imagine that we’ll talk again, but it seems the right thing to do.
In large letters, I add, “It was nice to visit with you.” Maybe not what my mother would do, but like Germaine said, she’s not here. It’s only me.
I hand the slip of paper to the nurse.
“Can you make sure he sees this?”
“Of course,” she says.
In the car, Germaine says, “So?”
I tell her it was worse and better than I thought.
He’s a sad, angry man, but not without feeling.
On the drive home, I open the window and lean my face out to feel the country air on my cheeks.
The hills are lush and inviting. I try to remember that line from Sherlock Holmes that Amity quoted on our first day in the village.
Something about hellish cruelty and hidden wickedness, a pretty village and a sordid crime.
I think I get it now. The secrets of strangers are pure pleasure.
Murder, revenge, lies, abandonment—they’re a respite from the mess and confusion of our own lives.
Fictional chaos is a holiday, a beautiful distraction.
We can go along for the ride and shiver from the danger without worrying that we’ll get hurt.
And in the end, all questions will be answered, all actions explained.
Everything will be clear and put back in its place.
The sun will come up, the bus will run its route, the nosy neighbor will resume her watch, and the beauty at the bakery will smile and ask which kind of savory pie we’d like today.
Fake mysteries are like roller coasters at an amusement park, thrills and relief without pain.