“Thankyou,Miss Contreras. My grandson is not much for tea and conversation. You do me a service by chatting with me.”
Carolyn smiled and patted her hand.
—
Minerva pressed a handagainst her temple and closed her eyes. Her fingers brushed the knob on the car’s stereo, turning the music down. It was her own CD she’d popped into the player. A compilation of the Pixies.
“Are you okay?” Noah asked.
“My head is killing me.”
“Was Carolyn grilling you about something?”
“No. I’ve had a migraine all morning.”
“She has those. Terrible ones. When I was little, I thought she had a tumor and her head would explode. You should try chewing peppermint. It works for her. Better than an aspirin, she says.”
She opened her eyes. What she needed was a nap. She wasn’t getting enough sleep. Discordant thoughts rattled inside her head until dawn and there was the rising tide of anxiety.
The previous night she’d dreamed of her great-grandmother in those last few days before she died.You simply live through it,she’d said.
The words had followed her through the morning, like a melody that had wedged itself in her brain.
Noah gave her a sidelong look. “Anyway, if Carolyn said something nasty, you should ignore it. She can be a real piece of work, but it’s not worth thinking about it.”
“She wasn’t being nasty. She offered to pay for my room and board. I don’t know how that would work, but she did.”
“It should be easy enough. She set up something like that for Thomas, so the university must know how to funnel the money.”
“For Thomas Murphy?”
“Yeah, when he was tutoring me and came to the house they gotto talking. Art, like I said before. Then, during Thanksgiving, I was mostly wasted, so it was Carolyn and him chitchatting. She thought he was a ‘promising young man.’ ”
Minerva frowned and turned to look at Noah. “Why would he drop out if all his expenses were being covered? I mean, he had a full ride.”
“Maybe he was tired of academia. It can happen, you know.”
Maybe. Burnout wasn’t out of the question. Minerva herself was probably smack in the middle of an existential crisis.
Noah slowed the car down. “Did she talk about me?” he asked.
“Somewhat.”
“Come on, if she was discussing her band of prodigies, she must have mentioned what a great disappointment I am. She loves to do it.”
“What do you mean, her band of prodigies?”
“The underprivileged kids she’s given scholarships to, or grants or whatnot. The Yates Foundation is ‘dedicated to fostering the brightest young minds of their generation.’ She enjoys going through all those files with their pictures, reading about the spelling bees they won or the trophies on their shelves. Fine little prodigies like yourself with their high IQs and their empty bank accounts.”
“She implied you were immature and said you should get married,” Minerva said bluntly, but then again, he’d been equally blunt.
He snorted. “Of course she did.”
She crossed her arms and glanced at the ocean. Noah drummed his hands against the wheel of the car and sighed.
“I shouldn’t have said that about the empty bank accounts.”
“It’s true,” she said simply.
