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“Thank you, Adam,” my mother said. “How is she?”
“She’s okay. You know how it is: one second it’s a crisis, and the next, it’s like nothing ever happened. If you asked her now, I don’t think she’d even remember why she was so upset.”
Diana gave him an accusing look. “Whywasshe so upset?”
“There’s never really one reason,” Adam said cautiously, and Richard snorted again.
“This one’s very diplomatic, isn’t he,” he said, as he descended the rest of the way downstairs and took a seat on the step beside my mother. “Very polite. Doesn’t want to tell everyone that drunk Uncle Richard spent the night passed out on the sofa and woke up just in time to cause a great big scene.” He chuckled again. “Well, I’ll tell on myself. One minute I was having a late-night tryst with a bottle of scotch, the next I was waking up with a ripping headache, and there was a man who looked like an angry ferret standing over me and asking if the lady of the house was at home. It’s all a bit fuzzy, but I believe I told him there were certainly no ladies here, and no gentlemen, either—”
“Asshole,” Diana interjected.
“—and he wandered off, and I followed him, and then Mother stumbled in from God knows where in that ludicrous nightie, and she told us we were both trespassing and that her husband would have us arrested. And yes, in my cranky and hungover state, I may have rudely reminded her that she doesn’t have a husband anymore.” He gave me a wry look. “I am, as you kids say, the asshole. Mystery solved.”
Diana looked at William and said, “God, I wish we’d stayed in a hotel,” and stalked away down the hall. Her husband cast a wordless glance at all of us and walked away after her, and I had a sudden flashback to another holiday ten years previous, the last time Diana had come to visit us for Christmas. Like Mom, my aunt had been married and divorced once by the time she was forty; unlike Mom,she didn’t have a kid hanging like a millstone around her neck, and she was desperate not to be alone, but also terrified of choosing the wrong man . . . again. Her first husband had been some kind of musician—I had a very old, very hazy memory of sitting at his feet while he sang and played a complicated, Spanish-inflected arrangement of “Puff, the Magic Dragon” on an acoustic guitar—and while they didn’t talk about it much in front of me, I still gathered that he’d been a disappointment in the way that handsome men with guitars usually are. Diana had been between boyfriends on that Christmas ten years ago, and a little bit drunk, when she told my mom that she had given up entirely on sexy and exciting. She wanted nice, reliable, even boring: the Toyota Corolla of men. (“So, midsize and Japanese,” Mom said, at which point Diana laughed so hard that she choked on her Chardonnay.)
I couldn’t help thinking now that it seemed she’d gotten what she wanted: William was so bland that he barely registered as human, like someone had put half a personality in a man-shaped box and filled the rest of the empty space with foam packing peanuts. Certainly Diana never had to worry about him cheating on her, not just because it was hard to believe anyone else could like him enough to sleep with him, but because it seemed like he might wink out of existence entirely anytime they weren’t together. It made me wonder again what they’d been arguing about when I passed their room last night.
Mom sighed. “I’m sorry about all this, Adam,” she said. “It’s... well. I’m just very sorry.”
There was a moment where nobody spoke, where all the things my mother didn’t say in the ellipsis between “It’s” and “well” seemed to hover in the air.It’s a shit show. It’s embarrassing. It’s insane that a house full of grown adults can’t stop squabbling and sniping at each other even when someone is dying.Even Richard looked embarrassed. But Adam didn’t: he crossed the distance between us in a few steps and dropped to a squat, eye level with my mother, as if he were talking to a child.
“Listen, Dora,” he said, looking steadily at my mother, “there’s nothing to apologize for. If this were easy, you wouldn’t need me. I’m here because it’s hard. Not just for your mom. What you and Richard and Delphine”—he nodded at each of us in turn—“what you’re all going through, that’s hard. And having Miriam here with you . . . don’t get me wrong, it’s good. But it was always going to be really challenging, and that’s nobody’s fault.” He paused. “Except ours, maybe. Willowcrest is really focused on the residents, and that’s mostly a good thing, but sometimes I think we don’t talk enough about how rough this is on the families.”
My mother took a shaky breath. “Thank you,” she said.
Richard stood up. “Yes, thank you. I for one am delighted to know that Mother is under the competent care of a living saint. And since you all have things so well in hand, I think I’ll go have a mimosa.”
We all watched him stride out of the room, and Mom shifted uncomfortably. “You said not to apologize, but—”
Adam laughed. “I’ve been called worse. Don’t worry about it.”
“My brother has always dealt with things in his own way. Or not dealt with them.” She sighed again. “Anyway, I guess I’d better go talk to him. To both of them. There’s a lot to discuss, including some things I was hoping might wait until after Christmas, but...” She trailed off, looking at me. “Maybe you could keep Mimi company? Find something to occupy her? The things we’re talking about, I don’t want her overhearing.”
I started to answer, but Adam stood up. “She’s been talking about a bakery she used to go to back in the day. Over in Northeast Harbor.”
Mom shook her head. “If there was, I’m sure it’s long gone—”
“For sure,” Adam interrupted, “but I checked online, and thereisabakery over there. Probably not the same one, but it might be a nice little trip anyway. I could get her out of the house and give you all some privacy.”
“Oh, that’s a lovely idea,” Mom said, sounding relieved. “You two can take her together. Adam, do you know where her boots are? You’ll need to put them on for her, her arthritis—”
“I got it,” he said, smiling. “I’ll go get her ready.”
I waited for Adam to disappear down the hall, trying to ignore how giddy I felt that we were about to be alone together—or at least alone together with Mimi, who would probably fall asleep and leave us free to talk. There was something about the way my mother had pivoted away from Diana’s questions. A sense, very familiar, that there was something she wasn’t talking about.
“What was he doing here?” I asked.
Mom blinked. “Hmm?”
“That man. Jack Dyer.”
“Oh.” She paused. “The furnace. He owns a local oil supply company. I was thinking of switching the account, because the guy we use now is, well... I don’t need to bore you with the details.”
“It’s eight o’clock in the morning.”
“Yes?”
“He just walked in here at eight o’clock in the morning, while everyone was sleeping, four days before Christmas... to talk about heating oil?”
