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“Yeah, sure. Bye.”
It wasn’t until after I’d hung up that I realized I could have asked him to come stay with me, but I hadn’t.
I also realized that I hadn’t said,I love you too.
I woke the next morning to the sound of the ringing phone. Not mine, but the house phone, sitting in its cradle on the living room table just above my head. Sun was streaming through the windows. I fumbled for the phone, my back stiff from a night spent on the sofa, and got it on the fourth ring. “Hello?”
“Ms. Lockwood?” a chirpy and vaguely familiar female voice said.
“Yes,” I said automatically. Then: “Wait, which one? This is Delphine.”
The woman on the other end laughed. “Hey, Delphine. It’s Tasha at Willowcrest.”
Right, I thought. The receptionist. I almost asked her about the last thing I’d heard her say—that is way too much puke for one person—before I remembered that she hadn’t seen me, that I wasn’t supposed to have been there.
“There’s a couple things here for you,” she was saying. “Do you have time in the next couple days to pick them up?”
“What things? My grandmother’s stuff has been cleared out for weeks.”
“They’re from that other lady, Shelly Dyer? She had a letter from your grandmother in with her papers. Her son said he didn’t want none of that stuff and to just throw it out, but I thought you might want it. And there’s some pictures, too.”
I was on my feet. The house was eerily quiet, as if it was holding its breath. Shelly had died before I could speak with her—but somehow she was communicating.
“I’ll come get them,” I said.
“Great. When?”
“Right now.”
An hour later, I was walking through the front entrance at Willowcrest. Tasha waved at me from the front desk.
“Hey, there you are. Here you go.” She slid an envelope toward me. “What’s your email?”
“What?”
“For the photos,” she said, and laughed at my confused expression. “Sorry, my bad. They’re digital. I think she took them with that tablet, you know, the one she always had?” Tasha clucked her tongue. “Her son didn’t put a single app on there. Can you believe that? They make all kinds of tools for stroke patients, to help them communicate, even get their speech back. But you don’t know what you don’t know, I guess. Kind of amazing that she managed to send those pictures all by herself. I guess she could only figure out how to attach one at a time so it’s, like”—she broke off, counting under her breath—“seven emails? She sent them all to the facility inbox. Lucky I even saw them, the system thought they were spam. Looks like photos from your grandma’s funeral, maybe? Sorry, I had to open the one, just to check what it was.”
I gave her my email address, and my phone buzzed immediately as the first one came in. The subject line read4 Mrm Crvasos family,and the attached photo was blurry—no surprise, I thought, remembering how Shelly’s hands had trembled when she tried to lift the camera. I still recognized the shot, because I was in it: standing with Adam on the day of Mimi’s funeral, me in my black dress, him in his Willowcrest polo shirt. He was leaning toward me, one hand resting on my shoulder, and my stomach fluttered nervously. I’d thought we were being careful, but even out of focus and on a tiny screen, you could see that there was something between us that wasn’t strictly professional. There was a lightahemnoise from the front desk, and I looked up to find Tasha grinning at me.
“I want to say I’m sorry for your loss, but I hear maybe congratulations are in order, too,” she said, and winked. “Can I see it?”
“See what?”
“Girl. The ring!” She laughed and leaned in. “Don’t be mad at Adam. It’s not his fault I’m a nosy bitch.”
I extended my hand with a smile. “Here.”
“Ohhh, he did good,” she said, nodding with approval. “What is that, a ruby?”
“No, it’s—” I started to say, then broke off as my phone vibrated in my hand. I glanced at the screen and felt a flare of annoyance. It was a number with a 510 area code—Los Angeles—and the message said:Del, if this is you, please call me at your earliest convenience.
It could only be Richard.
“Everything okay?”
“Yes,” I said, scooping up the envelope and putting it in my bag. “But I’ve got to go. It was nice to see you.”
She smiled. “You too. I’ll forward you the rest of those emails. And hey”—she leaned in, her voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper—“congratulations. I’m so happy for you two.”
