She put her face in her hands and sobbed. I pulled a paper towel off the roll and handed it to her. The crying went on and on. I kept my physical distance.
“You okay?” I finally asked.
“I’ve never felt so humiliated in all my life,” she sputtered.
“Yeah, well, I’m not so comfortable right now, either.” I tried to lighten the mood. “I think we just raised the word ‘awkward’ to a whole new level.”
She didn’t smile as I’d hoped she would. She dabbed at the tears running down her face.
“Look,” I said. “Let’s just put this behind us. Go home and get some sleep.”
“You won’t tell...”
Who? Her parents? “God, no. This is just between us. We both need to put this out of our minds.”
“I don’t think I can ever face you again. And the girls...” Fresh tears filled her eyes.
“It’ll be okay. We’ll just act normal, and after a while, it’ll go back to feeling that way.” I picked up her purse and handed it to her. “You okay to drive?”
She nodded again.
“All right. Take it easy. And look—as far as I’m concerned, this never happened. I’ve already forgotten about it.”
I watched until she climbed into her car and pulled out of the drive, then closed the door and leaned against it. Some things were easier said than done, and I was afraid that forgetting about this was one of them.
50
hope
Over the next week, I threw myself into clearing Gran’s house, working on the coffee shop mural, and helping plan Gran’s secret send-off party. Matt was working long hours in Baton Rouge, preparing for a trial. When I had a spare moment, I scoured the Internet, tracking down Joe Madisons in the Sacramento area.
Problem was, there must be about a million of them. I didn’t know if I was searching in the right city or even the right state—after all, Gran’s last information about him was sixty-something years old. I didn’t even know if he was still alive.
I’d phoned every airline listed as operating in the United States, asking if they’d had a pilot named Joe Madison who’d worked for them thirty years ago (I figured that the more recent the records, the better the odds that airlines might still have them), and every one of them told me they couldn’t access files that old and that even if they could, they wouldn’t release that information. I’d sent e-mails and even a snail-mail letter to each airline, asking them to please forward it to any Joe Madison pilots who might have worked for them.
“I can’t find a single lead,” I told Matt when he showed up in the backyard Thursday evening, the first week in May.
He pushed the swing with his feet. “I talked to someone I know, who put me in touch with a private detective.”
“I can’t afford a private detective.”
“I can.”
My heart turned over. I couldn’t believe he would offer something like that. It was the kind of thing you’d do for family, or your oldest, closest friend. Not someone who was leaving in a few weeks and would be out of your life forever.
“That’s really sweet, Matt, but I don’t want you to do that.”
“Why not? I want to help.”
“Well, as Zoey would say, ‘it’s not ’propriate.’”
“According to who?”
“Me.”
I thought the subject was closed. Matt and I continued to meet in the evenings after the girls and Gran were in bed—we’d usually talk in the swing, and then end up rendezvousing in the shed—but Tuesday the following week, he showed up at Gran’s front door shortly after dinner, accompanied by a elegant elderly woman with high cheekbones and white hair styled in a French twist. She wore a simple navy dress and red lipstick. “I hope it’s not too late to be paying a call on your grandmother,” Matt said.
“Not at all. She and I were just going through some old albums.”
