Aunt Mercy had said little during our visit to the lawyer’s office, but when we got out to the parking lot, she asked me to ride with her to the house. “Gabby, I want to tell you something, but I don’t want Honor to know . . . yet, anyway. Let her make her decision about whether to buy the house. If she wants to buy it, fine, don’t say anything about this. But . . .” She glanced at me as we followed my sister’s compact Chevy rental back to the house. “Noble and I grew up in that house. It has sweet memories for me too. If Honor decides not to buy it, I’d like to. I’m only sixty-two; I’ve got a few years before I have to pack it in.” She grinned and turned her eyes back to the street.
“Oh, Aunt Mercy,” I breathed. “Could you do that?”
She nodded. “What else am I going to do with my money, an old maid like me! I’ve been doing the research. A hundred-fifty thousand would be a fair price. Actually, I was going to say something to you girls, once your mom’s name came up on the list for assisted living. But now . . .” She reached out and patted my knee. “I’m so sorry you’ve lost your mom, Gabby. Sorry for everything that’s happened to you the past few months. Please, I . . . I hope you’ll let me be mama to you, whenever you need me. You and your sisters. You’re all the family I’ve got.”
Both of us were blubbering by the time we got back to the house. I grabbed her arm before she got out of the car. “Aunt Mercy, I think you ought to tell Celeste and Honor that you’d be willing to buy the house if Honor chooses not to. Frankly, I don’t think Honor really wants to move back to Minot. I just think she’s grasping at something to hold on to, now that Mom is gone. But if we had a home to come home to sometimes, a place to be together . . .”
Which turned out to be exactly the case. We sat around the kitchen table, eating a chicken Caesar salad we’d picked up at Marketplace Foods and downing copious amounts of iced tea as we sorted out “what’s next.” Honor was giddy with relief that the house could stay in the family, but that she didn’t have to actually buy it and move back here. “Maybe in twenty years I’ll be sick of California—or California will be sick of me—and I could buy it then,” she giggled . . . and then realized what she’d said. “Oh! Aunt Mercy, I didn’t mean I want you to die or anything in twenty years. But if you want to move into a retirement home or something . . .” She actually turned red under that California tan of hers.
Aunt Mercy laughed. “Hey, missy, you’ll be my age in twenty years . . .” She put her silver pixie-cut alongside Honor’s long tresses. “What do you think, girls? Can you imagine Honor at sixty-two?”
Celeste and I cracked up. “Yeah, sure,” I gasped. “Spitting image—except she’ll be sixty-two with that permanent dolphin tattoo.”
“Yeah, yeah. You laugh. But believe me, there are already a lot of sixty-somethings in California walking around with tattoos. But hey—what about Mom’s Galaxy? I could use a car. Could drive it back now.”
As a matter of fact, I’d been thinking the same thing. I needed a car now, didn’t I?
Celeste frowned. “What about your plane ticket? We got round-trip.”
“Goose. So I lose a few hundred. That’s cheap for a car. Or . . . should I pay you guys for it or something?”
We all decided Honor should take the car. I had the van to drive back anyway. Aunt Mercy said she’d see Putnam about the title change.
A load seemed to have lifted off the pressure to get everything done that Monday afternoon. With Aunt Mercy buying the house, we decided to leave most of the furniture, since Aunt Mercy’s condo was a lot smaller and wouldn’t fill this house. “But if any of you girls want something down the road, and have a way to get it, just tell me,” Aunt Mercy said.
Celeste reached out a hand and gently untangled a few of my unruly curls. “What about you, Gabby? Aren’t you going to need something to put in that apartment when you get it? Might as well take some of the family stuff now since you got that empty monster van out there in the driveway. We don’t really need anything”—she nailed Honor with a look—“do we, Honor?”
“Ah . . . nope.” Honor shook her head. “Couldn’t take it on the plane anyway. I’d like some of Mom’s jewelry, though. That old-fashioned stuff is funky right now.”
I looked at my sisters—these virtual strangers Mom’s death had catapulted back into my life. My oldest sister’s gentle touch as she untangled my rebellious curls had conveyed more affection than I’d experienced from her in a long time. And their encouragement to take what I needed from our family home to fill an empty apartment somehow seemed so much more than that—a step toward filling my empty life with a promise to care for one another once again . . .
I started to weep. And suddenly Celeste and Honor and I were in each other’s arms. Grief and loss, love and hope all mixed up in our tears.
A last round of hugs with promises to call at least once a week—Honor still didn’t have e-mail—and my sisters set out early Tuesday morning, driving in caravan to Billings, Montana, where Celeste would catch her plane for Anchorage, and Honor would just keep going, driving the Galaxy to Los Angeles. It had cooled off during the night but promised to be another sky-blue scorcher.
All six of us had spent the previous afternoon loading Moby Van with my old single bed, which we’d taken apart, and several boxes of dishes, silverware, pots and pans, blankets, sheets, and towels—most of which had seen better days, but hey, at this point in my life, something was better than nothing. We even squeezed in Mom’s favorite wingback upholstered rocker and the Oriental rug from the dining room. “You need something to sit on in your new apartment,” Aunt Mercy had insisted.
Celeste had had the brilliant idea of making Aunt Mercy the power of attorney for Mom’s estate, even though she—Celeste—was still technically the executor, so we stopped packing long enough to drive back over to Mr. Putnam’s law office to fill out the necessary forms, sign our names, and get them notarized. The man’s secretary got a bit flustered when we piled into the law office with no appointment, but given the circumstances, Mr. Putnam agreed to stay an extra hour to squeeze us in.
“Huh. Probably charged us extra too,” Honor grumbled on our way out.
Aunt Mercy had come over early Tuesday morning to say good-bye to all of us before going to work at the library. “I’ll move this real estate transaction along as quickly as possible, Gabby,” she whispered in my ear just before I climbed into the driver’s seat. “I know you need the money to get on your feet and get your boys back. Now go before my mascara runs and I look like a raccoon when I show up for work.” I felt a pang as I backed Moby Van out of the driveway and waved wildly to my aunt out the window, yelling good-bye, which got Dandy all excited, barking until the house and Aunt Mercy disappeared from sight.
With the van loaded to the gills, we left Minot behind and headed down the two-lane highway, intent on taking I-94 all the way back to Chicago. Jodi and I decided we’d split the cost of a motel room somewhere around Minneapolis—if we could find one that allowed pets—and get back at a decent time the next day. “You sure?” I asked. “That was an awful short visit with your parents. We could go back through Des Moines, same way we came.”
Jodi shook her head. “Uh-uh. Right now I’d rather get home to Denny.” She looked at me a little doe-eyed. “This is the longest we’ve been apart since Denny and the kids drove to New York to see his folks a couple of years ago. I had to stay home because I’d been sick all spring, and cases of SARS were cropping up everywhere . . .”
We talked a lot, Jodi and I, on the way back to Chicago. But I steered away from saying anything about the breakdown between Philip and me until I heard Lucy snoring in the backseat after we ate the sack lunch Aunt Mercy had packed for us. Jodi had taken over the driving, her shoulder-length brown hair caught back with an elastic band to keep it off her neck. She was a few years older than I, but somehow managed to look younger. Her face was relaxed, her eyes alive. The look of a woman who knows she’s loved.
“I’m jealous, you know.”
Jodi glanced at me, startled, then looked back at the highway. “What do you mean?”
“You and Denny. You guys ought to clone your relationship, sell it on eBay. You’d make a ton.”
She slipped a small grin. “Yeah, well, we have our moments. Me, I’m a terrible nag. And Denny can be so dense.”
I shrugged. “Maybe. But it’s obvious you guys love each other. Philip and I were that way once. Crazy about each other. Gosh, Jodi, the man’s so gorgeous I used to melt like chocolate on a hot day whenever he came in the room. We laughed at his mother’s objections to our ‘mismatch’—almost like marrying me was his rebellion against their snooty conventions. He was going to be the rising star in the commercial development business, and I . . .” I grabbed my T-shirt and dabbed at my eyes. “I tried, Jodi, I really tried to be the good corporate wife. But somewhere along the way, I lost myself. Lost Philip too . . .”
I leaned against the passenger-side window, watching the Minnesota hills rolling past. “It’s like I don’t even recognize him anymore . . . couldn’t relax and be myself when he was around . . . everything I did was wrong. But”—I felt heat in my chest—“I still can’t believe he just kicked me out, kicked my mother out, even kicked the dog out! I mean, who is that man?!”
My voice had risen, and I glanced into the backseat to be sure Lucy was still sleeping. “He even started gambling,” I muttered darkly. “Practically every weekend! Last time I talked to Henry Fenchel, it sounded like Philip’s new love affair with the dice was starting to affect their business partnership.”
We rode in silence for a few minutes. Then Jodi glanced at me. “Do you pray for Philip, Gabby?”
I gaped at her. Pray for Philip? I’d certainly done a lot of praying about Philip. Or ranting at God about Philip. But pray for him? “Not really,” I said slowly. “I’ve been too mad.”
“Maybe you should. He sounds lost.”
We found a motel just across the Minnesota-Wisconsin state line that allowed pets for a ten-dollar fee. Lucy complained about stopping, said she could sleep in the car just as well. “Maybe you can,” I muttered. “We need a bed.” The room had two queen beds, and Lucy claimed the one farthest from the door—after double-locking the door and jamming the desk chair under the handle. She didn’t bother to undress either. I shrugged at Jodi. Go figure.
I was used to sleeping with Lucy’s snores back in the bunk room at Manna House, but I don’t know if Jodi got very much sleep. At one point, I got up and rolled Lucy over onto her side, and we managed to fall asleep before she moved again.
In the morning we treated ourselves to breakfast at a nearby pancake house before hitting the road again. Couldn’t believe how many pancakes Lucy was able to put away. I asked if she’d like to sit up front for a while, but the old lady shook her head. “Nah, me an’ Dandy is all settled back here. ’Sides, can’t keep up with all that chitchattin’ you two doin’. Ain’t got no kids to talk about, ain’t got no husband, ain’t been anywhere, ain’t got nuthin’ to say.”
I laughed and glanced in the rearview, still not used to seeing Lucy without her purple hat. “Okay, just one question, Lucy,” I said over my shoulder, “and then we’ll leave you out of the chitchatting. Where did you learn how to clean a bathroom like you did at my mom’s house? You even folded the ends of the toilet paper in that cute little hotel style too. I think you’ve been living a secret life.”
“Humph. Ain’t got no secret life. Got this job as a hotel maid when I first come to Chicago, but . . .” Her voice drifted off. “Let’s jus’ say, cleanin’ bathrooms wasn’t the only thing I learned on that job. All sorts o’ people gonna take advantage of ya any way they can, ’specially if they think you ignorant. Decided it was safer out on the streets. Been makin’ my own way ever since. Just . . . lonely sometimes.” A long pause. “Gonna miss Miz Martha.”
Jodi and I looked at each other. That might explain the triple door-locking last night. Still, there was a lot of story left out of that two-bit summary. But at least it was more than she’d ever given up before. “Thanks, Lucy.”
“Yeah? Thanks fer what?”
“For being a good friend. I think you were the best friend my mother ever had.”
Lucy made a funny noise. “Just . . . shut up an’ drive, will ya?”
We laughed and settled down for the final day of our trip. Jodi studied the road atlas. “Gee, it’s not that far. We oughta be home in six hours or so.”
Home . . . For the first time in weeks, I let myself think about what that meant. I was still pretty broke, but within a few days or weeks, I’d have real money in my bank account. “Can’t believe my mom actually left us an inheritance,” I murmured. “Paid off the house when my dad died, bought that term life insurance . . .”
The reality of it all was beginning to sink in. I might even have enough to buy a house one of these days—but that would have to wait. I had more immediate goals. “Can you believe it, Jodi? I’m going to be able to rent that apartment, get my boys back here in time for school—”
“Buy the whole building if ya want!” Lucy quipped from the backseat.
A big semi thundered past us, making the van shudder. I gripped the steering wheel, wondering if I’d heard right. I looked over at Jodi. She was staring at me. “Gabby! What Lucy just said.”
“Buy the—?” Now a shudder did ripple through my insides. I shook my head. “Oh, no, no, I don’t think so. I don’t have that much . . .”
“How much? I mean, how much are they selling it for? You might have enough for a down payment.”
“Yeah, buy the building,” Lucy growled. “I might even move in. Or visit ya.”
I kept shaking my head. “You guys are crazy, you know that?”
Jodi laughed. “Yeah, I know. God is crazy too—look at how He answered our prayer about how to get your mom’s body back to North Dakota for burial! But Gabby, think about it! Josh and Edesa told me you wanted Manna House to use the Dandy Fund to buy a building for second-stage housing for mothers with children, but—”
My ears got red. “Yeah, what did I know? We’re riding in the Dandy Fund.”
Jodi was practically bouncing in her seat. “Gabby! Listen to me! What did Mabel Turner say to you when you applied for the job at Manna House? You told me yourself ! She believes God brought you to Chicago because He has a purpose for you at Manna House.”
My mind was tumbling even as she spoke. A six-flat . . . not far from Manna House . . . up for sale . . . Precious and Sabrina . . . Tanya and Sammy . . .
Jodi punched me on the shoulder. “Maybe this is it.”