SUSAN STOOD outside under the eaves of the Starbucks with her phone pressed to her ear. It was still raining, but now the sun was out and a stippled puddle in the parking lot was the same pale lemon as the sky. Noni’s phone rang and rang and Susan imagined her dead in her bed, her loose skin grayer than it had been in the hospital the night before.
“Who are you to protect me? When have you ever cared about me?”s
“Answer the phone, Lois.” Susan’s voice seemed to rise up from some black promise of an earth-tilting grief. What was she thinking, leaving her in the hospital like that? Had she thought to even leave her a note? No, she hadn’t, nor had she ever put herself fully in her grand-mother’s skin because never had there been a more self-absorbed and selfish bitch than Susan Ahearn Dubie Dunn. And Bobby was wrong. She shouldn’t have told Lois about the letter. Doing that was so much worse than when she’d hopped that bus back to Gainesville where Danny Rolling still roamed freely, Susan too wrapped up in her own story to even begin to think of what her grandmother was having to suffer through.
And why did she tell her? Because Bobby said she had a right to know? That Susan would be disrespecting Lois’s loss and treating her like a child if she withheld such news from her? No, this was all bullshit. She’d told Noni about the letter because part of her wanted to hurt her with it. Because part of Susan was still angry at her grandmother for ever telling her in the first place. Because, oh, how much easier it would have been to have lived all these years believing that her mother and father had died in each other’s loving arms.
Susan punched in the speed-dial number for Lois’s cell phone, though she knew Noni never used it. She waited five rings then called the shop. Marianne answered right away, her voice prim and a bit too composed, but there was a genuine warmth there, even answering the phone, and it was as if she were reaching through the phone and squeezing Susan’s hand.
“Marianne, it’s Susan. Did my crazy grandmother actually come in today?”
“No, honey, she didn’t. But she called me, and she sounded strange. I’m worried about her.”
“Is she at her house? She won’t pick up.”
“She didn’t say. Susan, I don’t mean to pry, but has something happened that I might be able to help with?”
Susan stared at the puddle in the lot. A large businesswoman in a tan pants suit smiled at her as she pulled open the Starbucks door and walked in. Susan’s eyes stung. Her throat was a thick mass of far too much to say, though she wanted to say all of it, beginning with what was growing inside her, beginning with that. “Yes, I don’t know, I—”
Her phone buzzed against her ear. She pulled it away and saw “Home,” her heart skidding along packed dirt, for Bobby could only be calling about one thing, the other Danny, her “father.” My God, was he here?
“I have to go, Marianne. Thank you.” Susan’s fingertips were hot wax, and Bobby answered after the first ring.
“Hey, baby.”
“Is he there?”
“No, but your grandmother is. And she’s not doing so well. She’s not doing well at all. Where are you?”
Slumping relief then cool disappointment, it was like being pulled in for a long, consoling hug then pushed far away. It was so familiar, really. So goddamned familiar.
“I couldn’t stay there.”
“I should’ve canceled my meeting.”
“What’s Lois doing?”
“She’s using the bathroom. I’d like to feed her, but we’re low on everything. Maybe you can pick something up?”
A Jeep pulled into the lot, a big man climbing out. His eyes walked all over Susan, and she turned her back on him and said to Bobby, “Okay. I can do that.” She heard the big man open the Starbucks door behind her, and she kept her back to it and him and said, “I’ll be home soon.” Those last two words felt so natural, as natural as air and water and fire and sky, so why was she denying it? Wasn’t it time to stop denying it?