When Laura came downstairs, Ruth was in the pantry. She said, “I thought there were Honey Nut Cheerios.”
Laura said, “I finished those yesterday.”
“The whole box?” Ruth said.
“No,” Laura said. She was so ravenous she could hardly think. “I remember. Those moths? So, because of what you said, I took a look just to make sure, and we had weevils. I had to throw out the instant oatmeal and the Oreos, too.”
Ruth made a face of disgust. She said, “We should probably go through everything. See if we have to throw anything else out.”
“I took care of it,” Laura said. “Everything weevilly is gone.”
“Heroic child,” Ruth said. “How did I manage while you were in Ireland?” Then, “Have you heard from your dad today?”
Laura said, “He texted. There’s a call with a big investor he has to prep for. Yesterday he was telling me all about this new ocean-mapping project, some VR thing. He’s going to give me and Susannah some goggles or something. Are you okay with all of this? Him being back here?”
“Well,” Ruth said. She lifted a jam jar off a shelf, put it down again. “Sometimes people show up long past the point you think you’ll never see them again. I guess I’ll figure it out as we go. I did love him. He left. And it was awful, but I got to a place where I was okay with that, we got to a place where we were okay, you and me and Susannah, and I got on with my life. We got on with our lives the way you have to.”
“I used to be so mad at him for leaving,” Laura said. “But then I mostly just stopped thinking about him. Except for once in a while.”
“Oh, honey,” Ruth said.
“What does he want?” Laura said. She’d found some smoked almonds and crammed a handful into her mouth. “From us?”
Ruth said, “I don’t really care what he wants from me. He wants to spend some time with you and Susannah. Good for him. But I don’t need anything from him anymore, and I don’t expect anything, either. Maybe for him to pay for your school. For Susannah, if she goes to college. But me? My life is good. I’ve got my two sweet girls home for Christmas.”
Laura said, “I love you, Mom.” She hadn’t said it since she got home. She resolved to say it every day from now on. Twice a day, even.
“I know. You’re my good girl. The one I never have to worry about,” Ruth said, and for a moment she looked confused, almost frightened. Then she shook her head.
“What?” Laura said, her mouth full of almonds again.
“Nothing. Here’s a bag of dried apples. Want one? There’s rice, too. I could make us steamed rice for breakfast. We could have sriracha with it. Or we could go over to What Hast Thou Ground? and get coffee and muffins and bug Susannah.”
“Rice sounds great,” Laura said. “I’ll make coffee.”
They had breakfast and Ruth asked Laura to tell her about Ireland. Was Professor Annam still giving her a hard time? Were her suitemates still fighting about the broken toaster? Was her dorm room as cozy as it looked? Laura found she remembered Professor Annam. Who was a hard-ass but good at explaining theory. The dorm room was lovely. Her suitemates were not. Nobody ever wanted to share living space with brass instruments. Answers came to her as long as she didn’t think about the fact that none of this was real. She had three helpings of rice and most of the coffee.
Ruth said, “If the mothers in the NICU could see you put away food, they would weep with envy.”
“Jet lag. My body’s all messed up.” Laura lifted her hand to tuck her hair behind her ear and then stopped, remembering. “I was thinking about going to the grocery store if you want to make a list.”
“Yes, please!” Ruth said. “We seem to be out of everything. Even the condensed milk. I was going to make peppermint-candy fudge, but I need condensed milk.” She gave Laura her ATM card.
Today was Ruth’s teaching day down at the community college in Silverside. The pay wasn’t much, but she liked her students. She was a Silverside graduate. Even after she’d gotten her nursing degree and started rotations at the hospital, she’d continued to take classes at Silverside and, later, teach. Today was the day she co-taught a class on home care with her good friend June, a respiratory therapist, and then she and June would sit in on a course they were auditing on financial security in retirement.
She said, “Talk to your sister, okay? When she gets home.”
“About what?” Laura said.
“About her future,” Ruth said, sticking her head out the porch door to check the weather. “She’s the one who should be in college. Not me. This weather! I ought to be in the backyard on a towel. Getting some vitamin D.”
It was true Ruth had the unmistakable pallor of a night nurse. But she was still very, very lovely. She’d always dated, discreetly. But it was hard to find quality men who were free for romantic dinners at three p.m.
Laura said, “I already gave it a go with Susannah, and it went about how you would expect. Besides it’s not like my career plan is particularly sensible. At least Susannah’s making money right now.”
“Don’t be silly,” Ruth said. “You’re doing what you love. Laura, I don’t care if you make a go out of music or not, I just want you to not be afraid of what you want.”
“Well,” Laura began. It hurt more than she would have thought to hear her mother praise her for being brave when, in fact, she had merely been dead.
“Meanwhile, Susannah won’t even look at a college application,” Ruth went on. “She’s sleepwalking through her life. She goes to work, comes home, and watches TV. Well, as far as I can tell. She does dishes! She doesn’t cause any trouble. Remember the time she found the baby opossums and brought them home and put them in the bathtub and forgot to tell anyone? The time she decided to cut down the apple tree in the backyard because there were evil elves living in it? The volcano cake that actually exploded?”
“I remember when she cut off my bangs in fourth grade,” Laura said. “I remember she cut off her own bangs, too, to apologize.”
“Oh my God, that was terrible,” Ruth said. “I almost killed her. But we would have had to have a closed coffin.”
Once again, something in her expression changed. She shook her head.
Laura said, “Remember when she wanted to make all the babies in the NICU joke tombstones for Halloween?”
“The time we found out she was saving up to have surgery to make herself shorter,” Ruth said. “The time for my birthday she decided to make me a red velvet cupcake for each year I’d been alive and then wanted me to eat at least one bite from every single one. I miss that Susannah. This one is just so sad. And she won’t tell me what she’s sad about. If it was just you and Daniel going to Ireland, if it was just her wishing she’d gone, too, I’d understand. But I think it’s bigger than that. Something happened, something happened to her, but I have no idea what. Maybe she doesn’t even know. You know?”
“Yeah,” Laura said. “I know.”
“My ride’s here. Enjoy the sunshine!” Ruth said. And then was gone.
Laura texted Daniel.
He texted back immediately.
Laura texted:
She texted Susannah:
Susannah’s reply was two photos. The first was a boy sitting at a table in the window of What Hast Thou Ground? Blond, nice shoulders, long nose. The second was a selfie, Susannah behind the counter, a smirk on her face.
Laura took her mother’s car and went shopping. She bought everything on Ruth’s list, and then she used her own debit card to buy two hundred dollars’ worth of hamburger meat, canned tuna, Skippy peanut butter, and an economy pack of off-brand energy bars, the cheapest she could find. What was the point of having a savings account when things were the way they were?
She put away groceries and tried not to think about her ear. Not to think about all the rest of it. She tried, again, to turn the saltshaker into something other than a saltshaker. Then another saltshaker, a slightly smaller one. But she couldn’t even manage that. Because it wasn’t even noon yet, she read the newspaper, poked around online, liked a couple of Rosamel Walker’s posts on Facebook (Was Rosamel back home for Christmas? Was the other girl, smiling in two pictures, just a friend? A roommate? Had Rosamel been sad when Laura went missing? Not because they knew each other that well, but in the general way you were sad when someone you said hey to in the halls at school suddenly disappeared and the assumption was something terrible had happened to them. Which it had.), and made hamburger patty after hamburger patty. The last three patties she didn’t even bother to cook. She pinched off blobs, forming them into little balls like cookie dough, and ate them ravenously. Afterward, she licked her fingers clean.
For the meeting with Mr. Anabin, Laura put a notebook and a good pen in her bag. A dozen energy bars. Then she went through her closet, eating spoonfuls out of a peanut butter jar, trying to decide what she ought to wear. Was she supposed to wear something practical? Something to show she understood the gravity of the situation? A T-shirt with a funny slogan to try to suck up?
In the end, Laura went with her favorite blue jeans and a fitted black poplin top printed with small white flowers, which she’d never worn. It had a sash that tied in the back in a big jaunty bow and was the kind of thing you would wear if you were being interviewed at SXSW about the success of your band by someone from Stereogum and there was a photographer. She’d been saving it for something like that, anyway. She decided to leave her hair down. All this time she did not think about her ear. The only reason she was leaving her hair down was because styling it would have been too much. You didn’t want to look like you were making an effort. Ears were ears. If they were on your body, they belonged to you. She didn’t have to wear earrings if she didn’t want to.
She told herself that if she could just make it through the afternoon with Mr. Anabin without thinking about her ear or touching her ear, she’d take all of her money out of the bank and go get a new guitar. She’d buy the Epiphone. Screw the Gretsch. Someone else could save up for it.
Nothing is wrong with your ear, she told herself. So stop thinking about it.
The spoon scraped the bottom of the peanut butter jar, but that was okay. She wasn’t particularly hungry anymore.