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“You need to stand up for yourself, or life will always knock you down.”
I thought she might be right about that. Nana was almost always right about everything. So I decided things would be different from that day on with my sisters. Nana was as wise as an owl, she even had a new owl-shaped clock to prove it, so I asked her the question again.
“Doyouknow why the heart is a symbol of love?”
“Well, that is an interesting question and therefore deserves an interesting answer,” Nana said. “The ancient Egyptians thought that the human heart epitomized life, the Greeks believed that it controlled our thoughts and emotions, and the Romans declared that Venus, the goddess of love, set hearts on fire with Cupid’s help. The Romans also believed that there was a vein connecting the fourth finger on the left hand directly to the heart. There isn’t, but that’s why people traditionally wear wedding rings on that finger, even today. In the Middle Ages, Christians agreed that the human heart had something to do with love, and hundreds of years later, the familiar red shape still appears on greetings cards, playing cards, even T-shirts. The heart symbol became a verb in the 1970s, with I heart New York. Does that answer your question?”
“I think so. How do you know the answers to everything?” I asked.
She laughed. “I don’t, nobody does! But if I do know more than most, it’s because I read. Books will teach you anything you want to know, and they tend to be more honest than people.”
We finished our fish and chips as the sun was setting outside. Then we readAlice’s Adventures in Wonderlandtogether, which has always been one of my favorite books.
“Speaking of love…” Nana said. “I hope you know how much I love you.”
I grinned. “How much?”
She looked out of the hospital window and pointed at the full moon. “I love you from here to the moon and back.”
“I loveyoufrom here to the moon and back twice,” I replied.
It was her turn to smile now. “I love you from here to the moon and back three times and once for luck.”
Later that night, when I was alone again and tucked into my hospital bed, I started to wonder if my heart being broken meant that I could nevertrulylove someone. The human heart beats eighty times a minute, one hundred thousand times a day, and about thirty-five million times a year. In an average lifetime, a heart will beat two and a half billion times. Maybe it had something to do with endurance, something that hearts and love have in common?
The second reason I remember that particular hospital stay so well was because my mother cried the next day when she came to visit. It was something she rarely did—the crying part, I mean—and as I watched her talking to a doctor on the other side of a window on my hospital ward, I wished I could lip-read. She never told me what that doctor said or why it upset her so much.
We all hear the sound of the lounge door creaking open, and I spin around.
Rose looks as startled as we do as she lets go of the handle, the key still in her hand.
“I just need to pop to the loo,” she says, as we continue to stare at her.
“You’re going to go out there again? Alone?” Lily asks.
“Yes. Or do I need a hall pass? You told Trixie off for being scared to go to the bathroom earlier. I’m a lot older and I have a gun. There’s no need to worry about me. I’ll be two minutes,” Rose says, and leaves the room before any of us have time to reply.
“Conor,” Lily whispers.
He looks up like a startled meerkat, then whispers himself. “What?”
“Do you think it was a bit strange how quickly Rose knew what was wrong with Trixie? Finding the blood between her toes like that?”
“She was missing a sock…”
“I know, but still…”
“When was there blood between my toes?” asks Trixie. “And who was that man in the audience on the lawn in the home movie?” She has a habit of asking too many questions, sometimes not waiting for the answer to one before asking another.
“That was Conor’s dad,” Lily says.
“That’s weird,” Trixie mumbles. “I thought I recognized him. Also, on the video, Nancy said something about his work gettingnoticed.And the Scrabble letters on the tape’s cover said NOTICE ME.”
“She’s right about that,” I say, and Lily stares at her daughter as though she is a child genius.
“Why was Conor’s dad at Seaglass?” Trixie asks next.
Lily shrugs. “Because he became friends with Nancy.”
