Jen watched Nan walk slowly down Main Street in a puffy black parka that emphasized the stoop of her shoulders.
Jen pushed her own shoulders down and back against the driver’s seat. She couldn’t stop trying to picture Nan at her age, Indian print top, long flowing hair, saying goodbye to her son, taking for granted that she would see him tomorrow.
Then that middle-of-the-night phone call, blowing up Nan’s whole life.
Jen was already tearing up. She should go inside, hands raised in surrender. Don’t worry, I completely understand. Not a good fit.
What if I start to cry during the meeting, she had asked Paul in a panicked phone call.
You won’t, he said, you’re a fighter.
There was a lot wrong with his statement, but she was too overwhelmed to pick it apart. Because she was not a fighter, or at least she did not want to be one anymore.
Nan walked gingerly up the steps to the coffee shop, hand gripped onto the railing. Jen waited until she was inside before stepping out of the car.
It was warm and steamy inside and she and Nan greeted each other pleasantly enough, ordered their coffee, and settled in the back corner, as far as possible from the people at the other two other tables: a couple in flamboyant biking jerseys, a woman breast-feeding a baby under one of those gauzy wraps and watching something on her phone.
Jen claimed the command seat facing the door. She pictured Paul nodding with approval.
Nan shrugged out of her coat. “Let’s get to it,” she said. “I don’t want to waste your time.” As Nan reached into her bag, Jen felt the conversation careen out of her control.
Across the room, the baby shifted underneath the wrap. The mom had dark circles under her eyes, clutched her coffee double-handed, like it was salvation.
Pal, Jen thought, you have no idea what’s ahead.
Nan pulled out her phone and slid it on the table. She didn’t have a passcode, Jen noted, and her fingers were shaky and too-deliberate. They hovered over the mail app and after some consideration tapped into the saved-emails folder.
“Ah, here it is,” Nan said.
The message was from Colin. Subject line: As discussed.
There were no contents, just an attached file that Nan frowned at over her glasses.
“I don’t believe you’ve seen this?” she said. She turned the phone so it was facing Jen, and she pressed play.