Chapter 17
By Monday, Summer wanted the kitchen table cleared. Every visitor put something on it: oranges, a casserole, hospital papers, a loaf of bread they didn’t need. She couldn’t set down a plate without moving proof that people were worried about them.
Her mother had gone home early to collect more clothes. Summer carried the papers into the sitting room, then came back for the oranges, finding Jonah at the counter in the blue shirt he’d slept in.
“You can leave those in the bag,” Jonah said as she reached for a bowl. “I’m not eating an orange. Are you?”
Summer put the bowl away and found room for the bag on the counter.
The photographs and messages were with the investigators, who had also spoken to their families.
For now there was nothing else to send. She’d hoped the medical samples might have given them an answer by this morning, but there had been no call.
Jonah sat at the cleared table. “I booked an appointment,” he said. “Thursday. Will you drive me?”
“Of course,” Summer said, sitting beside him. “I haven’t called mine yet. I will this morning.”
“You’ve had the number out since last night,” he said. “Do you want me to get it? It’s beside the sofa.”
“I know where it is,” Summer said. “I picked it up this morning, then I saw the state of the table.” She looked toward the sitting room. “Could you just give me a minute?”
Jonah nodded and reached for his glass. After breakfast Summer called her mother, who came back and sat with her while she made the appointment; by lunchtime there was a date in the calendar.
Lorraine arrived at three with her husband and another covered dish. She knocked instead of using the key, a small courtesy Summer noticed because she had begun listening to every sound at the door.
They ate because it gave Lorraine something to do besides look at her son. Jonah’s father talked about a road closure near his work. Summer had heard the story before; she let him tell it again, grateful for a subject that didn’t require her to reassure anyone.
Lorraine waited until they put down their forks. Then she rested both hands on her lap.
“Kylie’s mother called,” she said. She looked first at Jonah, then Summer. “I told her she couldn’t come here.”
Jonah’s hand went flat on the table. “Then why are we talking about it?” he asked. His voice was so quiet that Lorraine leaned closer before she understood the words.
“Because I don’t want you to be surprised.” Lorraine’s face tightened. “She may try. I wanted you to know.”
Summer looked at her. “What does she want?” she asked.
“From us?” Lorraine hesitated, and the hesitation told Summer more than a careful explanation would have.
There had been a request for a private meeting, an appeal to the years the families had known each other, a suggestion that Kylie was having a difficult time and shouldn’t have her life ruined.
Lorraine had refused. She gave them that much, then stopped.
Jonah stared at the casserole. Summer wanted to take it off the table, wanted to remove every ordinary object that people could look at while saying something unbearable.
“She was having a difficult time,” he said. He looked up at his mother. “I was helping her with it.”
“You were,” Lorraine said, reaching toward him. Jonah moved his hand closer to his plate, and she let hers fall.
Summer put her knee against his beneath the table. He leaned into the contact without looking at her.
“She doesn’t get to come here.” Summer kept her eyes on Lorraine. “Neither of them. I don’t want to open my door and have to listen.”
“You won’t have to.” Jonah’s father leaned forward. “If they contact us, we’ll deal with it. We’re not carrying messages.”
Lorraine nodded, her eyes wet. Summer was glad of the agreement and angry that it needed saying at all.
For a while no one spoke. Beyond the window, a delivery driver tried to find a number on the house opposite, moving his van forward a few feet and stopping again.
“Her house used to be as comfortable as my own house,” Jonah said.
He wasn’t looking at anyone. “Her mom would leave a plate for me if I was late from practice.”
Lorraine covered her mouth. Summer had been so furious at the woman asking for quiet from her own kitchen that she had forgotten Jonah knew what that kitchen looked like.
He rubbed at the skin beside his thumbnail. Summer took his hand before he made it bleed.
“Did she ask how I was?” he said. This time he looked directly at his mother.
Lorraine waited too long. “Not the way she should have,” she said.
Jonah nodded once. He looked toward the window and didn’t say anything else.
Summer nearly asked Lorraine to leave. Then she saw Jonah’s other hand closed around the edge of his father’s sleeve, holding him as he tried to stand.
“I’ll make tea,” she said. She stood because sitting still had become impossible. “Does anybody want any?”
They all said yes. She counted four cups twice before she trusted the number.
At the counter, Lorraine came beside her. She didn’t take over, only stood close enough to speak without making Summer turn.
“I keep thinking about the ravens,” she said. She looked at the kettle. “I thought you were backing out of something you’d promised her.”
Summer set a cup down. “I wasn’t,” she said. “I told her they were staying.”
“You said so at the time,” Lorraine said. She pressed a tissue against her nose. “I’m sorry.”
Summer wiped a drop from the saucer with her thumb. She’d almost offered two of the ravens afterward, and now she couldn’t bear the thought of having delivered them there herself.
“I almost changed my mind afterward,” she said. She hadn’t intended to admit it. “I thought maybe I was being unreasonable.”
Lorraine moved a cup beneath Summer’s shaking hand before the water could miss it. “Careful. Let me hold that.” She kept it steady while Summer poured.
“I liked her,” Summer said. She watched the water rise. “Sometimes. That’s what I keep getting stuck on.”
“I liked her too.” Lorraine put a spoon beside the cups. “I let her drive me home on Thursday. We went past her old school, and she told me about a teacher I’d forgotten.”
Summer carried the tray to the table. Jonah was listening to his father with one hand closed around the cuff of his sleeve; she put a cup beside him and waited for him to move it out of the way.
After his parents left, Summer found Jonah in the sitting room with the television on.
He was changing channels without waiting to see what was on them.
She put the leftover food in the refrigerator and brought in the laundry her mother had folded before going home; Jonah moved his feet to make room for the basket.
“I wanted to call her mother,” Summer said. “When yours was talking. I wanted to tell her exactly what happened in that room.”
Jonah turned off the television. “Please don’t. She’ll start calling here, and I can’t listen to her.”
“I haven’t,” Summer said, taking a towel from the basket. “I wouldn’t do it without asking you.” She folded it again, although the edges already matched, then put it back. “I want her to be ashamed.”
“She used to tell people I’d be her son-in-law.” Jonah leaned forward with the remote between his knees. “At school, before Kylie and I had even gone out. She’d say it in front of both of us.”
Summer sat on the arm of the sofa. “Did Kylie like that? I would have hated my mother doing it.”
“Sometimes,” he said. “When somebody else was interested in me, usually.” He switched the television on again and immediately lowered the volume. “I thought it was funny.”
She got up and carried the towels to the stairs. There were some of Jonah’s shirts beneath them, one with a seam twisted inside out; she took it back to the sofa to fold.
“Do you actually want to watch this?” she asked. On the screen, a woman was following a man down a church aisle. “Because they’re about to get married.”
Jonah changed the channel. “Find something for me. I’m making every possible mistake.”
Summer put on an old comedy. When her mother called, she went into the kitchen and asked her to come at ten the next morning. Jonah was complaining about the movie when she returned; ten minutes later he wouldn’t let her change it.