AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I breezed to her side and hugged her gently, hoping the gesture looked more carefree than it was. “How are you?” I asked.
“I’m fine. I’m probably going home tomorrow morning. How’s Papa?” She cut off a piece of turkey and chewed slowly.
“As you said, he should make a good recovery.”
“Don’t play those bullshit games with me. How. Is. He?”
“He can’t speak well yet, but apparently that’s normal in these situations. His right side is partially paralyzed.”
Mom’s face went ashen. She spat the mouthful of turkey into her napkin. “Oh, my God.”
“He’ll be fine, Mom, I promise.”Ipromise? Who did I think I was? A miracle worker?
“If he’s not, Sadie, you’re going to have to move back home to help us.”
There it was. The capital G Guilt Trip. If she couldn’t cope, then it would be up to me to pitch in. Bullseye. Guilt, love, and anger twisted into a bitter rope in my gut. I held my tongue. I’d deal with this later.
“He’s in a private room now,” I said. “And staff are checking on him constantly. I told him they must think he’s a celebrity or something. Must be his rugged Gaelic good looks.”
Both Mom and I got our height, long straight noses, and coppery brown hair from D2. At seventy-nine years old, he was still a handsome man in a roguish, Sean Connery kind of way.
Mom told me that Ronnie had stayed all afternoon and they had gossiped like old friends. I dreaded to think what secrets might have been shared but asked nothing. When Mom finished eating dinner and lay back and closed her eyes, I texted Wayne to meet me at the West entrance to the hospital.
Back in Broxton, I fed the cats and nibbled on the pizza that Wayne had picked up for me. I made D2’s bed with fresh sheets and put the used ones in the washer. While that was churning away, I watered the vegetable and flower beds and tried not to wilt in the heat. I missed Simon with a burning hunger, but it was the middle of the afternoon on the West Coast, so I compromised with a short text and not a phone call.
He called at nine, as I was getting into bed. It was six, his time. He’d be breaking for dinner and a quick walk before he started his evening calls with Australia and Asia.
“Babe.” His deep voice revved my pulse into overdrive. I was hooked on him and there was no cure.
“Hi. I miss you already.”
“How’s everybody doing?”
“The doctors are pretty sure Mom can come home tomorrow. D2 will be a little longer yet.”
“That’s great. What a relief. I suppose in a way your grandfather was lucky. He could have had a stroke anywhere. At least there were paramedics on hand when it happened. And now he’s got you there to help him recover.”
“A strange kind of luck.”
* * *
The next morning,I hovered around D2’s room, spending time with him in the moments between visits by doctors, nurses, and various therapists. His speech was slow, deliberate, and sometimes incomprehensible but the longer I was with him, the easier he was to understand. Maybe I couldn’t speak other languages, but I could speak D2 post-stroke, and that cheered both of us. I urged him to rest, and he fell asleep around 11:00. I sat by his side for a while before leaving him a note saying I’d be back again the next day.
After lunch, Wayne and I took Mom home and she sat in the front of the limousine beside him. In her words, she didn’t want to get too far above her place. I said nothing because to have argued would have given her exactly what she wanted.
Even though I specifically asked her not to, she had invited Ronnie for dinner that night, so I’d already lost round one in what I knew would be a week of skirmishes. Neither Mom nor I had much talent in the kitchen beyond reheating frozen meals, and Ronnie had volunteered to pick up dinner and ice cream. On the strength of that, Mom invited a half dozen close friends to come around for dessert so they could hear all about my engagement party and my life with the rich and trying-not-to-be famous.
Ronnie arrived at six sharp, and she and Mom hugged like besties. We gobbled down steaming hot gyozas, chicken yakitori, and all manner of sushi before the doorbell rang again. Soon there was standing room only in the living room and the fridge was packed with casseroles. One of the kitchen sinks was full of bottles of wine buried in ice. All Mom’s friends had seen Ronnie’s blog with the photo of the two Donohue girls, as Ronnie had dubbed us.
Mom’s friends clustered around Ronnie like flies on honey and tried to pry secrets about Simon and me from her. Even though Mom seemed to enjoy Ronnie’s company, the oblique answers Ronnie gave to their questions said that she hadn’t learned much from Mom.
My godmother, Mom’s best friend since kindergarten, Cherie, took my left hand and held it up to the light so the diamond and rubies blinked and sparkled. “Look at this rock! I could pay off my mortgage and buy myself a Jag with what this cost!”
Cherie was my mother’s physical opposite: short, thin, compulsively well-groomed and uber-feminine with her always coiffed hair and five-inch heels. Unlike my mother, she had no mechanical aptitude and couldn’t even change the clock on her car. My mother dressed plainly without accessories while Cherie slept in diamond stud earrings. She ogled my ring with open jealousy.
“You’d have to buy two Jags,” Mom said. “One to drive while the other was in the body shop.”
Everyone laughed, some unkindly, at the reference to Cherie’s notorious driving history. Her cars always looked like they’d gone ten rounds with a mechanical prizefighter, dented, dinged, and creased.
