As soon as school started again, Colleen got two pieces of disappointing news. She and Amanda had applied for a grant to develop a high school foreign-language curriculum for the kinetic learners, the athletic kids, drawing on the research done for the primary grades. The committee praised their application, but the three anticipated grants had been cut to one. Colleen and Amanda didn’t get it.
On top of that, her summer plans fell through. She was supposed to spend a month touring Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand with a group of Norwegians, then traveling on her own for another three weeks, but the organizers of the Norwegian tour decided that there were enough young people in the group that they didn’t need an interpreter.
She never relied on her summer income to pay her regular bills. She saved that money, half in her retirement account, half in her travel fund. Subletting her apartment provided even more money for those two savings accounts.
Not only did losing the summer gig make it impossible to reach her savings goal for the year, but it also meant that she would need a place to live. She approached the couple who were going to sublet her apartment. Oh, yes, they were still coming to Charlottesville for a summer program and were so looking forward to living at her place. Colleen didn’t push them. She wasn’t the sort of person who made awkward requests of others.
She could go to Chicago and live rent-free with her father and his second wife, but Genevieve would try so hard to make Colleen feel welcome that it would exhaust both of them.
Grannor, on the other hand, wouldn’t do a thing beyond telling Leilah to set another place at the table. Colleen would go there. Surely Ben would be gone by then. Once the other summer residents returned, Grannor was likely to start hinting that his time was up. But when Colleen turned in her students’ final grades on a Thursday afternoon, he was still squatting in the boathouse, having dinner with Grannor every night that she didn’t have other plans.
He couldn’t be staying because he enjoyed those evenings. Leilah must be like the sirens in the Odyssey, the beautiful, mythic creatures whose irresistible songs lured sailors into drowning themselves.
Grannor seemed pleased at the idea of Colleen coming for the summer. In fact, she encouraged her to bring friends. “I like having young people about, and you teachers aren’t busy in the summers, are you?”
How little Grannor knew of the real world. Colleen didn’t have student loans, but most of her friends did. They had to work in the summer. Amanda was the assistant manager of the athletic camp that used the school’s facilities. Other friends taught in various summer schools. But the Fourth of July would be a long weekend this year, so Colleen was able to invite a few people to come to the lake.
The weeks passed. Colleen proctored the AP exams; Ben was still at the lake. She wrote her own final exams; he was still there. As she calculated the final grades, she was resigned to the notion that he was going to be there. With Leilah.
She celebrated the end of the school year with her friends Thursday evening and the next morning finished packing and organizing her apartment for her renters. Her phone went off continually. People were hoping that she would stay for the weekend. Some wanted her to change her mind and come to their parties. Other people who, being incapable of making social plans for themselves, were calling to hint that if she was doing something, maybe she could invite them to come along.
Being the person whom everyone liked took a lot of time.
She was trying to close her extra suitcase when the phone went off again. Dum…dum…her breath caught.
It was the Olympic fanfare. That had been Ben’s ringtone. Four years ago he had jokingly programmed it into her phone, saying that he might as well be her Olympian since he would never be America’s. But that had been four years ago. She had upgraded her phone at least twice. The data must have transferred automatically. Her phone, pathetic little creature, had never lost hope that he would call.
“Ben?”
“Where are you? Are you still at school?”
“Yes.”
“I’m glad I caught you so you don’t have to backtrack. Your grandmother’s had an episode of some sort, and we are at the hospital in Staunton.”
The hospital? “What do you mean an ‘episode’? Is she okay? What happened?”
Grannor would hate being in the hospital. She had bragged that she hadn’t been admitted since the birth of her youngest child sixty years ago.
“She’s still in with the doctors so I can’t tell you much.” Both he and Leilah had been with her when it happened, he said, and by the time the ambulance arrived, she was conscious again. “You should come straight to the hospital. You were planning on coming today, weren’t you?”
“Yes, yes…Of course, I’ll come straight there.” Colleen looked around frantically. How much did she have left to do?
“She seems stable,” Ben was saying. “There’s no reason to drive like a crazy person.”
“I won’t.”
Staunton was on the east side of the Blue Ridge Mountains about forty miles from Charlottesville. Colleen’s phone continued chirping as she drove west on interstate 64, but driving was one of the few times she ignored phone calls. She did pick up when she heard the children’s song “Brush Your Teeth.”
“Hi, Dad. I’m in the car so I’ve got you on speaker.”
“Then I’ll be quick. You shouldn’t talk on the phone while driving. You’re going directly to the hospital?”
So he had heard about Grannor. “How did you find out?”
“Ben Healy called. I’m on my way to the airport now.”
“You’re coming? Right now?” Things must be worse than Ben had told her.
“Genevieve is out west with her son’s family, but your brothers will probably get in Saturday morning.”
“Sean and Finn? They’re coming?” This must be really serious. Colleen had been about to move around a slow-moving horse trailer, but decided not to. Now was not the time to get fancy with the driving.
“I don’t know exactly when they’ll arrive, but don’t you worry about that. You focus on driving carefully.”
“Yes, Dad.”
Her father didn’t usually lecture her about road safety. He was upset.
This should have prepared her, but she almost didn’t recognize the small, white-haired woman in the hospital bed, IV lines snaking into her arm, a nasal cannula feeding oxygen through her nose. Was she in the wrong room? No. The man rising up from the bedside chair, folding up his newspaper, was Ben.
Ben…Ben…For a moment she saw nothing else. The room, the world, swirled and dissolved, leaving only him. How incredible he looked, with those cheekbones and green eyes, that copper-black hair. Suddenly everything that had happened—Leilah, his footsteps in the dark hall, the awkward conversations—none of it mattered. He was here, waiting for her.
Except he wasn’t waiting for her in the sense that she wanted him to be. He was simply waiting for someone to relieve him at Grannor’s bedside.
Why, Ben, why? Everyone else likes me. Why don’t you?
“I was hoping you’d get here before I had to leave,” he said. “I knew that you wouldn’t want her to be alone.”
Colleen forced herself to look back at her grandmother. “She looks so old.”
“She is eighty-six.”
“Tell me what you know.” She wanted to hear his voice.
He claimed not to have much news. He and Leilah had given her aspirin as soon as they could in case she had had a heart attack, but the doctors thought it was more likely that she had had a stroke. They would do more tests in the morning. Ben was afraid that he might have broken her sternum during CPR, but the ER people hadn’t thought so.
“You had to do CPR?”
“Not for long and just chest compressions. It probably wasn’t necessary, but when I couldn’t get a pulse immediately, I started right away.”
“You know CPR?” She wanted to keep talking to him.
“When you do any coaching, they want you to have it. My certification’s probably not current, but whatever.” He flicked his hand, dismissing any possible heroics. “I’d better shove off. I told your father I’d pick him up at the airport.”
“I could have waited in Charlottesville for him.” That was the closest big airport. Ben was having to go right back to where she had come from.
“I knew you’d want to be here. I don’t mind. And that little cooler…it’s got food for your dinner. Nothing fancy, just something from Subway.”
“How nice of you.”
“Leilah has a lot to do at the house, getting ready for people. Otherwise she would have brought you something better from the lake.”
“This is fine. This is more than enough.”
“There’s tuna or turkey for you. Ham or Italian deli meats for your father.”
“That’s great, Ben. Really.” Are you having trouble leaving? Why? You didn’t want me. “It has been good of you to spend so much time with Grannor. She enjoyed it.”
“You were right. She is an intelligent woman, and she actually enjoys having people disagree with her. She likes to argue.”
“Most people are too afraid of her to do that, but you’re used to doing things other people find scary.”
He shrugged. “It comes with the job, at least with my old job.” He turned his arm and looked down at his elegant watch. “I suppose I should be leaving.”
“Yes.”
“But the room’s cold. I’ll leave my sweatshirt.”
He tried to hang it on the corner of the bed’s footboard. It fell. Colleen bent to pick it up. When she stood up, he was standing with his hands in his pockets, still unable to leave. This is where you belong. With me. She dropped the sweatshirt on the chair and stepped forward. Putting a hand on his shoulder, she stood on her toes to kiss his cheek. His skin was rough against her lips; he hadn’t shaved. “Thank you for everything.”
For the briefest moment, she felt a warmth, a hand, at the small of her back. It was the lightest of touches.
“It was nothing,” he said. “I was glad that I was there.”
How nice he had been. Did he just feel sorry for her? She had seen it at parent-teacher conferences, the single mom and the happily remarried dad. The men were often very courteous to their ex-wives, deferential and solicitous…because they could afford to be. I was a shit to you once, but now I am going to be nice because I’m happy and you’re not.
Colleen would rather have Ben not care at all than be nice because he was happy and thought that she wasn’t.
Before the room could feel empty, a nurse came in. Colleen asked question after question. The nurse kept saying that the family would need to speak to the doctor, but clearly Colleen had been assuming too much from Ben’s calm. This was indeed serious.
“Is she going to be impaired?” Grannor would loathe that.
“It is too early to answer that, but some patients do make remarkable strides during rehab.”
Remarkable strides? Did that mean that Grannor had something remarkable to stride away from?
The room was bright with a harsh white light. After the nurse left, Colleen realized that she was cold. She had warmer clothes in the car. Should she go get them? No, Ben had left his sweatshirt for her. She had been sitting on it. She pulled it out from under her. It was a thick, soft cotton fleece, charcoal gray with a hood and a kangaroo pocket. She recognized the black and red Street Boards logo. That was the family company that his friend Seth was now helping to run. She pulled the shirt on over her head, scooping her hair free from the neck. The heavy fabric fell to the middle of her thighs. She could have worn it as a dress.
“You would not like seeing me in this,” she said to her grandmother.
Over Grannor’s left shoulder was a little forest of equipment mounted on chrome poles that sprouted from heavy wheeled bases. Green LCD lights flashed numbers that changed constantly, but their values varied only a little. Colleen assumed that a big change would bring people rushing in.
The chair was a padded vinyl recliner. The headrest was a little high for her. She reached behind her neck and rolled the hood of Ben’s sweatshirt. It made a nice little pillow.
She felt cozy in the thick fleece, cozy and taken care of. People didn’t usually think of her needing to be taken care of. It was nice.
Grannor had told her that she should have fought for him. What did that mean, fighting for someone? It wasn’t like she could have drawn her sword and forced him to love her. You could fight for things to happen, but not for people to change how they felt.
Sweet, but fierce, little Grammy O’Connell had known that.
Colleen’s mother had believed that God had put her on earth to raise her three children, these three and no others. Maybe that was true. If so, God had worked through her mother’s mother. Grammy O’Connell had called parishes throughout central and southern Minnesota, up into the Iron Range, and across the borders into Wisconsin and Iowa. Grammy had fought to make sure her daughter had children to raise. That was fighting.
Some of the ladies answering the parish phones must have gotten sick of hearing from her. “No, Mrs. O’Connell, we’ve already told you, none of our girls would ever…there’s no reason for you to keep calling.”
But Grammy, sweet, kind Grammy, had ignored the rejection and had gone on calling. Was that what Colleen should have done with Ben? If so, that was a more important lesson than the one about not wearing knits at the dinner table.
Colleen tucked her knees up under the sweatshirt, pulling the hem down over her legs. She suddenly asked herself a question that she had never asked before.
If Grammy had found Sean and Finn, who had found Colleen? Who had made the calls that had brought the priest to her grandparents’ porch in Georgia? Grammy wouldn’t have called parishes in the South.
It wouldn’t have been Grannor. She didn’t have Grammy O’Connell’s empathy for someone else’s pain, not even her own child’s. Moreover, she was a snob. Catholics had too many children and machine-made lace curtains. Grannor would have never called the secretary of a Catholic parish…unless it was to complain about weeds on the church’s sidewalk.
But someone must have.
* * * *
Ben dropped her father off without coming inside; Dr. Ridge would use Colleen’s car to get back to the lake.
“You should come too,” her father said. “There’s no reason for you to stay here all night.”
“I want to stay, Dad. I’m going to.”
“Ben said that you would feel that way and there was no point in fighting you on it.” He put his arm around her. “You’re a good girl, Colleen. I wish my mother deserved it.”
“She’s family, Dad.”
“Now, don’t you go Southern on me. But speaking of family, I talked to my brother. He wants to know if there is a DNR order.”
A DNR was a “do not resuscitate” order, instructing the health care professionals not to perform heroics to keep a person alive. “I don’t know,” Colleen answered. “Mr. Healy had her update all her papers last fall. So I assume she has one. I’m sure she would have wanted one.”
“Of course she would have, but Norton wants to have it rescinded.”
“Why? Is he concerned about how small the hospital is?” She herself had already wondered if they should transfer Grannor to a more sophisticated facility.
Her father shook his head. “I wish it were that. No, my charming brother and his wife—his third wife—have separated, and he doesn’t want your grandmother’s estate to be a part of the divorce settlement.”
Colleen made a face. There wasn’t anything to say to that.
Her grandmother woke up while her father was still there. She recognized them, but her speech was slurred and the right side of her face drooped. Colleen’s father was surprisingly comforting, taking her hand in his, telling her that she had had a little “event,” that she was in the hospital for observation. There was nothing to worry about, and Colleen would be here if she woke up again.
You do love her, don’t you, Dad? Somewhere beneath all your disapproval and hostility, there is still love.
“You were the best of the lot, Neddy.” Grannor seemed unaware of how impaired her speech was. “That wife of yours…is she here? She is so pretty, that red hair of hers.”
Colleen saw her father flinch. Genevieve, his current wife, kept her hair stylishly light. But his voice was still as soothing as before. “No, she couldn’t make it.”
A few hours later, after her father was gone, Grannor woke again. “Your mother, Mary Pat, she passed, didn’t she?” Her speech was still slurred.
“Yes, Grannor.”
Grannor sighed and shut her eyes. She didn’t like being wrong. “Is Will here?”
“Will?” It took Colleen a minute to figure out who she was talking about. “My cousin Will? Uncle Norton’s son?” They hardly ever saw Uncle Norton’s sons by his first marriage.
But Grannor had already dozed off again.
Her father returned in time Saturday morning to talk to the doctor. The news was discouraging. When he called his brother and sister to confirm their arrival times, Colleen had him tell Norton that Grannor had been asking for Will.
In the middle of the morning, her brothers arrived. Colleen had told them what to expect, so they didn’t even ask Grannor how she was doing. They instead pulled up chairs and started to reminisce about summers at the lake and spring vacations in Georgia. Colleen had heard it all many times before, but her brothers could tell a story. She was like a toddler with a favorite picture book. If either of them had skipped any part of a story, she would have wanted them to start over.
When an aide came to give Grannor a sponge bath, she, her brothers, and their father went out to the hall.
There were four of them. Suddenly she was no longer a child being comforted by family stories. Four wasn’t the right number. They had always been a family of five. Five plates, five forks, five seat belts, five tickets.
Except they weren’t even a family of four. There was Genevieve, Patty, and Liz. And Genevieve’s son, daughter, daughter-in-law, and little grandson. Colleen had spent Christmas with her grandmother because her father and brothers were with their wives’ families.
Did she want her father to be lonely or her brothers not to have married? No, of course not. She just wanted to feel like she still had a family.
As soon as the door to Grannor’s room closed, Sean spoke. “I have marching orders from my wife. I am to forget that I am the older brother. I am to do exactly what Colleen tells me to do.”
“Patty said that?” Colleen couldn’t help being pleased.
“Yes, she said that at a time like this, the women need to be in charge.”
“She’s absolutely right,” Colleen’s father agreed.
“But me? Not Aunt Laura? Shouldn’t she be in charge?”
“Oh, children,” her father sighed. “Whatever happens, we are not taking orders from my sister. And not from my brother either. I talked to Tim Healy this morning. I have your grandmother’s health care proxy, not Norton. And I can’t do anything as long as she is competent, which she seems to be.”
“What’s this about?” Finn asked.
Colleen’s father explained his older brother’s situation. “I’m sure that the three of you hope for your grandmother’s complete recovery, but we all know that she wouldn’t want to live if she were in pain or had severe cognitive impairment. Unfortunately, my brother wants her to be kept alive under any condition.”
Sean stretched and linked his hands behind his head. Finn folded his arms. Colleen knew that both of them were disgusted, but like her, they had been brought up not to criticize their elders.
“In the next few days,” Dr. Ridge continued, “even with the best possible outcome, my brother may want to talk about your grandmother’s estate. I don’t know exactly what’s in her will—she did a major overhaul of it several years after she became a widow—but I assume that most of it goes to my siblings and me. It’s possible that there will be some specific bequests to Colleen, silver and jewelry and such, but—”
“I hope that there are a lot of specifics for Colleen,” Sean interrupted. “She deserves more than the rest of us.”
“I agree,” her father continued, “but it’s less about Colleen herself than the fact that our family gives things to the girls. There will probably be other such bequests for Kimberly. I mention this in hopes that your wives won’t feel slighted.”
“Liz and Patty? Slighted?” Finn was surprised. “They won’t expect a thing.”
“And you should have known that, Dad,” Sean added.
Their father’s lips tightened. Then he nodded apologetically. “You’re right, son. Just because my blood relatives will behave badly doesn’t mean that other people will too. Let me say one more thing on the subject, and then we will not speak of it again. If I do inherit a third of my mother’s estate, it is my intention to disclaim my share and pass it directly to the three of you. I don’t need it, and in fact, I don’t want it. I have some ambivalent feelings in play here.”
The additional tests and the conversations about rehabilitation wouldn’t happen until Monday. Her uncle, then her aunt arrived, departed, then came back again. Colleen took Ben’s sweatshirt off, then put it on again. She got more ice for the sandwiches in the cooler. The local Episcopal priest stopped by. She ate the turkey out of one of the sandwiches. Flower arrangements were delivered. Her father returned, bringing her car back.
By mid-afternoon everyone was urging her to go back to the lake. She would have liked to have taken a shower, eaten a decent meal, and gotten a little rest, but no one offered to stay at the hospital in her place. She tried not to feel like a martyr. None of them felt that it was necessary to have someone in the room. Why should they inconvenience themselves to live up to her standards?
She didn’t have an answer for that…except that if it were Grammy O’Connell in the bed, the aunts, the granddaughters, the neighbors, person after person, would have considered it an honor to be the one to stay with her.
Where were Sean and Finn? They would feel uncomfortable, being here alone, helping with the pillows and the bedpan, but if Colleen asked, they would each take a shift. When they had left for lunch, they said that they would be back, but they hadn’t come.
She got out her phone to send Sean a text, but remembered that if he was at the lake, he wouldn’t get the message.
Finally at around eight, there was a light rap on the door. It was the youngest member of Grannor’s bridge club—a gal in her early seventies. She was wearing comfortable clothes and was carrying her knitting bag. She had heard that Colleen had been in the hospital for more than twenty-four hours without a break.
“You go home and don’t you worry about me,” she said. “I couldn’t sleep anyway, not until I figure out where I went wrong on this sweater pattern.”
Colleen kissed her.
* * * *
Lights were on all over the house. Colleen paused in the sitting room to speak to her aunt and uncle and then went into the kitchen. Leilah had a cookbook open on the counter; she seemed to be making up a grocery list.
The kitchen had been painted last winter, but it had never been updated. The narrow pine cupboards were probably original to the house; the linoleum floor was yellowed and cracked; the appliances were all from different eras, having each been replaced whenever it could no longer be repaired. Grannor had spent almost no time in the kitchen; she hadn’t cared what it looked like or how well it functioned.
Colleen felt awkward. Didn’t fighting for Ben mean fighting with Leilah? I’m out to take your man.
“I’m sorry.” She couldn’t help starting with an apology. “I’m sure you’re sick of people wandering in and out—”
Leilah held up her hand, stopping the flow of apologies. “I knew that people would be grazing all day. Do you want to eat here in the kitchen?” Her tone was surprisingly down-to-earth.
“Please.”
Colleen sat down at the old metal-rimmed kitchen table, relieved not to be treated like the Spoiled-Brat Princess anymore. Of course, Aunt Laura genuinely was a Spoiled-Brat Princess, and even Leilah, despite all her serene competence, might be finding that one such creature was enough.
Colleen watched Leilah take a ham out of the refrigerator. “I saw my aunt and uncle. Where is everyone else?”
“Ben went back to Charlottesville to get your cousin Will. Your brothers are in the cellar. Your father was with them for a while, but I heard him go up to his room.”
“The cellar? Why?”
“Apparently your uncle asked your brothers to install the outlets for cable.”
No wonder they hadn’t been back to the hospital. “I thought you had people coming to do that.”
“I did, but your uncle said that your brothers could do it.”
Her brothers were both electricians, having their Class A Master Electrician licenses. Clearly they could install outlets.
But they wouldn’t want to. They were happy to come to family homes and be guys, figuring their way through auto repairs, odd plumbing noises, and other things that they didn’t know a lot about. But to spend a Sunday afternoon doing what they did all the week, working on projects that hadn’t been carefully thought out, never having quite the right supplies…they hated that. Once their St. Paul–based business got established, they made it clear to all their relatives—to the O’Connells, their in-laws, and their birth families—that they would work for them without a labor charge, but the jobs had to be scheduled through the business and completed during normal working hours.
So this, being put to work by an uncle they didn’t respect, having only substandard tools…Colleen wished that they had refused, although if she had been in their shoes, she probably wouldn’t have refused either. All three of them had been brought up to treat their elders with respect even when they couldn’t actually respect said elders.
At least her father had gone to bed. As neat and precise as Sean and Finn were, they weren’t dentists, they didn’t need to be dentists. Having Edward B. Ridge, DDS, as their unlicensed helper tripled the amount of time any project took.
Leilah returned to her grocery list while Colleen ate. The phone rang. Leilah answered with her usual “Mrs. Ridge’s residence” followed by “Are they saying how late?” and then “No, I won’t wait up. There’s food in the refrigerator.”
Colleen stood up to put her dishes in the dishwasher. “Was that Ben?” Who else would Leilah talk to about waiting up or not? “Is Will’s plane late?”
“Yes, but it should be in by eleven. Ben’s going to stay at the airport until it lands.”
“That’s nice of him. I guess I will tell my aunt and uncle.”
“Then I will do a few more things in here and go to the boathouse,” Leilah said. “In case anyone needs me, you know where the intercom is, don’t you?”
Colleen nodded that she did and went to find her aunt and uncle. Both the library and the sitting room were now empty, but the door to Grannor’s bedroom was open and the lights were on.
“Ah, Colleen,” her uncle called as soon as he saw her in the doorway. “Do you know where your grandmother keeps her checkbook?”
Laura was opening the door of the nightstand. Norton was in front of the dresser, one of its drawers only partially shut. Colleen didn’t like this. “I don’t know,” she said.
“Leilah must know,” Laura said. “Whenever Mother sends me a check now, Leilah has written it and Mother has only signed it. Go ask her, would you, Colleen?”
“Why don’t we wait until tomorrow?” It was time to stop giving her aunt and uncle power that they didn’t deserve. “Then we can ask Grannor herself.”
“No.” Norton was firm. “We need to do this tonight. It appears as if a great deal of money has been spent on this place in the last six months.”
That was certainly true. “But Grannor has the resources for it, doesn’t she?”
“Of course, but the opportunity for…for, well, you know…”
Were they questioning Leilah’s integrity? Colleen might not like Leilah or the magazine-perfect repairs, but surely Leilah had far too much dignity to embezzle from an employer.
Norton and Laura, however, could be impossibly stubborn, and Colleen was too tired to bicker with them. “I’ll go ask her where it is.”
The kitchen lights were off, and Leilah was at the side door, ready to open it. Colleen stopped her. “My aunt and uncle want to know where Grannor’s checkbook is.”
“It’s in the front room.” This was a formal room across the hall from the dining room. “In the top drawer of the secretary. The bills and invoices are in the credenza. Is there a problem?”
“Oh, no. Not at all.”
Everything was right where Leilah had said. The checkbook was a ledger-style notebook, and the bills were neatly sorted in an accordion file. Colleen’s aunt and uncle were still in Grannor’s bedroom. Norton was opening more drawers while Laura was sitting on Grannor’s bed, looking at a chip in her nail polish. Colleen knew that Grannor would not like them being in there. She took the checkbook into the library. After her aunt and uncle settled themselves at the library table, she returned to Grannor’s room to close the drawers and straighten out the wrinkles in the bed’s coverlet.
She heard some hammering in the cellar. The sound was the high, tinny tap of a hammer against a nail head. It must be her brothers at work. She thought about going down to join them, but she wasn’t going to leave Norton and Laura alone with Grannor’s financial records. She went into the library.
She was already too late to save Leilah’s careful organization. The bills were now spread out all over the library table; some had fallen to the floor.
Norton was shaking his head as he paged through the checkbook ledger. “Money is gushing out of here. Look at this.” He thrust it in Colleen’s direction, his finger pointing at an entry. “Can you explain this?”
She refused to look at it. “I don’t think that it is any of my business, Uncle Norton.”
“That’s just like your generation. You duck responsibility. But someone has to be sure that the elderly aren’t taken advantage of.”
Colleen didn’t trust herself to answer. Her brothers stopped hammering, and a minute later she heard the whine of a power drill.
Laura was at the table, stirring through the bills. “That woman needs to come and explain herself. Colleen, go tell her that we need to speak to her.”
“She’s already gone back to the boathouse.”
“I don’t know why Mother didn’t have her sleep in the house. What did she do if she needed help in the night?”
“There’s a wireless intercom, but surely this can wait until morning.”
“She’s the paid help, Colleen. There’s no reason to be afraid of her.” Laura marched into the kitchen and after a few attempts managed to work the intercom.
“Leilah, dear.” Her voice was syrupy. “This is Mrs. Davenport. Mr. Ridge and I would like to speak to you. We are in the library.”
Colleen cringed. Why was her aunt talking this way to a woman who was better educated, more intelligent, and more refined than she was? Colleen sat down in one of her grandfather’s chairs and picked up a magazine. It was this week’s issue. Leilah never let magazines pile up. The minute a new issue came, the previous one went in the recycling bin.
The drilling started and stopped. The hammering started and stopped.
“I wish those boys would stop that infernal banging,” Laura fussed. “They’ve been at it all afternoon. They are giving me a headache.”
Colleen turned the pages of the magazine. Norton fretted about the new furniture on the terrace and the cost of putting in the dock even though the dock was put in by the same people every year. Laura continued to be unhappy about the noise from the cellar and the chip in her manicure.
It was another ten minutes before Leilah appeared in the door of the library. She didn’t greet anyone or sit down.
Aunt Laura had gotten more and more annoyed while they had been waiting. She started right in with the accusations. “You had the groceries delivered.”
As if Leilah had willed it, the hammering stopped. She stood in the oak-framed double doorway, wreathed in silence. “Yes,” she answered, her voice as cool as ever. “The big weekly trips were delivered from Staunton. Mrs. Ridge said that she always had her groceries delivered. She preferred it that way.”
“Didn’t she know that the delivery charge was more than triple what it was at home?”
“I believe that she did.”
“And why did you pay the gardener to plant the window boxes? Why didn’t you do it yourself?”
“Forget that,” Norton snapped. “That’s trivia. What about resurfacing the driveway? What was wrong with gravel?”
From the cellar came the vibrations of seven or eight quick hammer blows. Sean and Finn seemed to be directly under the library now. Leilah waited for the silence to return. “What precisely are you accusing me of? Padding the bills? Or are you assuming that I have some kind of kickback scheme with the local vendors?”
“More like a general lack of economy.” Norton waved a stack of invoices. “Spending more money than was necessary.”
Colleen had to say something. “Don’t you think Leilah has run the house exactly as Grannor wanted her to? If she had done one single thing that Grannor didn’t want, Grannor would have been all over her. Grannor loves to catch people in the wrong.”
Maybe that wasn’t the nicest way to defend her grandmother, but it was the truth. Eleanor Ridge was neither trusting nor easily manipulated.
Colleen glanced at Leilah, hoping to see the other woman acknowledge what she had said. Leilah returned her look with narrowing eyes. Clearly she did not want Colleen defending her.
Why not? What’s wrong with having me on your side? I’m a good team player.
“I consider myself answerable only to Mrs. Ridge.” Leilah’s voice was tight and controlled. “You will also find that I did not have a contract with her.”
“Well, see here, young woman,” Norton blustered, “don’t you be—”
Leilah held up her hand. “No.” When Laura started to speak, she did it again. “No.”
And then she left.
“Well, I never.” Laura sniffed.
“Did she just quit?” Norton asked.
“I think so.” Colleen was on her feet, halfway to the door.
“Don’t dash off and try to get her to stay,” Norton ordered. “Your grandmother will probably need a skilled nurse when she gets out of the hospital. There’s no reason to have excess staff.”
“But someone needs to run the house. This place is huge. Leilah has kept on top of everything. We aren’t going to get a nurse to do that.”
“For what we’ve been paying, of course we can.”
“And we can take over managing her bills,” Laura added. “We’ll put our names on her accounts and set up auto-pays.”
Grannor didn’t trust cell phones. She would never consent to online banking. And giving Laura and Norton access to her money? That would never happen. Colleen turned to leave the room.
“Where are you going?” Laura demanded.
She didn’t answer.
The lights on the second floor of the boathouse were on. Leilah came to the apartment door in answer to Colleen’s knock.
“Leilah, I am so sorry. Please understand. My aunt and uncle…they aren’t nice people.” Words were gushing out of her. “You have to ignore them.” If her aunt and uncle were her allies in a fight for Ben, then she was doing something wrong.
Leilah said nothing. Over her shoulder Colleen could see an empty cardboard box sitting by a bookcase.
“You aren’t really leaving, are you? Please. Won’t you reconsider?”
“I don’t choose to be questioned.” Leilah turned, moving back inside the apartment.
Not choose to be questioned? How could you choose that? People questioned other people all the time.
Colleen followed. She hadn’t been in here since it had been refurbished for Leilah. The apartment was small, neatly furnished with soft Pottery Barn–like neutrals. It was immaculate except for a familiar green sweater draped across the back of one chair.
It was Ben’s sweater. If Leilah left, would Ben go too?
Leilah was in the bedroom, lifting a neat stack of clothes out of a drawer. Two lightweight nylon duffels were on the bed. One already looked half-filled.
“You’re packing already? Isn’t there something I can do?”
“No.” Leilah placed the garments in the duffel, added a few more things, then zipped it up. “You could carry this to my car on your way out.”
“Your car? Now? You aren’t leaving tonight, are you? Right now?” This was so fast. “What about Grannor? What about Ben?”
“Your grandmother and I understand each other. She would not say goodbye to me.”
“But Ben?”
Leilah paused and looked down at her. Her height made Colleen feel childlike and powerless. “Relationships occupy a different place in my life than they do in yours.”
What did that mean? That she was leaving without saying goodbye to Ben?
“Leilah, could you please wait until morning?”
“No. And you have no right to ask me that.”
Maybe I don’t. But Ben does. You have to let him have a voice in this.
Colleen didn’t want to “win” like this. In fact, it wouldn’t be winning. It might be losing. With this sudden departure, Leilah and her pale, drifting clothes might swirl through Ben’s memory as The One Who Got Away.
Because that should be me. I should be The One.
She stood there for a moment, watching Leilah packing her clothes. Knowing that nothing she said could make any difference, Colleen went to the bookcase and started packing the books. Most were about Buddhism and other Eastern religions. Some of them were in French. Two were in Italian. The ones in French looked well-read. The Italian ones were pristine.
I could have helped you with the Italian. Colleen didn’t think of herself as being able to speak Italian, but she could read it. Why didn’t you ask me?
How unimaginable that was—Leilah asking for help. Colleen was surprised that she was even letting someone else pack her books.
Three books lay on their side; all were technical. Colleen opened the cover of one, and as she expected, it had Ben’s name. She left them there. He would have taken his laptop to the airport with him, but the stack of papers in the printer was clearly his work. She put them next to his books. She supposed that he had clothes in the bedroom and toiletries in the bathroom. She was glad not to be in there. She didn’t want to think about what had been happening in that bed.
The two duffels of clothes, the one box of boxes, a laptop computer bag, and a printer—that was all Leilah had. She and Colleen could easily carry it to the car. Leilah removed Grannor’s keys from her key ring and handed them to Colleen.
“Do we owe you any money?” Colleen wasn’t sure what else to say.
“None that I want.”
“What about a forwarding address for mail and such?”
“I don’t get mail here.”
“But won’t we need to send a W-2 or something? How will you file your income tax without one?”
Leilah waved a hand. She was not going to engage with that issue. It was too trivial.
Come next April, see if you think it is all that trivial. But Colleen stepped back, and without either of them exchanging another word, Leilah got in her car. A minute later the little car went around the bend in the driveway. Colleen could catch one more glimpse of the headlights flickering through the trees, then nothing.
The keys felt heavy and cold. Colleen put them in her pocket and looked at her watch. It was after eleven. Ben and Will should be here by midnight. As tired as she was, she had to stay up. She couldn’t let Ben walk into an empty boathouse.