Maren crossed her arms and stared at the bathroom tile.Four people she’d worked with were being processed into federal custody because of a notebook she’d kept in a flowerpot and a corridor she’d walked into with a phone and four minutes.
“I want to go back to work,” she said.
“When?”
“Tomorrow.My shift.”
“Maren —”
“I’m a nurse, Graham.That hospital has patients who need nurses.Whatever Janet was running, the patients on the third floor didn’t do anything to deserve being short-staffed because their charge nurse needed a personal day to process her feelings.”
“I’ll drive you.”
“I can drive myself.”
“I know you can.”He set the curtain ring down on the edge of the tub and looked at her.“I’d like to drive you.”
It was a different sentence than the first one.‘I’ll drive you’ was the man who had stood thirty-seven seconds away from her yesterday and counted Mississippis.‘I’d like to drive you’ was the man who had built her a new latch on the front door because the door closed behind her every time he wasn’t there to close it himself.
“Okay,” she said.
“Okay.”
* * *
She made the call from the back porch.
She picked up her phone — her real phone, the one with the cracked screen protector and the photo of her mother’s yellow walls — and dialed Sandra.
One ring.
“Baby.”
“I’m coming this weekend.”
“And?”
“And I’m bringing someone.”
Sandra’s silence lasted exactly two seconds — the span of a woman who had been waiting for this phone call since Saturday morning and had decided not to make a single sound that might scare it away.
“I’ll make the brisket,” she said.
“Mom, you don’t have to —”
“I’m making the brisket.End of discussion.”A beat.“What’s his name?”
“Graham.”
“Graham.”Sandra repeated it the way she repeated every new piece of information — tasting it, testing its weight.“The careful man.”
“The careful man.”
“Saturday at one.Don’t be late.”
“We won’t.”
“Maren.”
