“She’s awake and pissed off, so probably not long. She is asking where her visitors are and seems affronted we’re not already there, according to Dad.”
I laughed. “They’ll let her see people?”
“Oh yeah. I half-think Dad has bribed them to keep her there for a while so we can get her apartment cleaned out. Mrs. Bell said people are coming later this afternoon to start that process—move out the furniture, anyway, see what can be salvaged.”
“Probably good for her to not come home yet.”
He slanted me a look. “Can you do stuff remotely? Heal her, or whatever?”
I sighed. “I don’t think Grandma Kate is a problem anymore. But I do think we need to go see her, after Claire and Steve finish out their pony fix.”
His gaze wandered out toward Claire again almost eagerly, and I realized she was who he’d been watching, not the horse—and certainly not Steve. I could understand that. Claire was bright and sunny. Clean. Soft. Filled with hope and possibility.
Nothing like me.
I put my hand on my belly, feeling the emptiness behind it.
“She okay after last night?” he asked.
I nodded. “Well, as okay as you might expect. I don’t think she’s going to let anyone touch her hands again anytime soon. You know, Emily seemed almost normal there, for a few minutes. Before she snapped again, anyway. It was like I was looking at someone else entirely.”
“Yeah?” He shook his head. “I really don’t know her all that well. She’s always been a little strange.”
“Well, your mom knew her, right? They’re sisters, after all. And she knew her enough to be okay with her coming here. That has to mean she wasn’t always a complete freakshow.”
“I guess.” Max shook his head. “I just don’t know what happened to make it all turn so bad.”
“Yeah, well.” I set my bowl on the wicker coffee table, most of my food untouched. “I think I know who does. We should go visit your grandmother.”
The silence inside my head was still unsettling, and it weighed on me more heavily as the morning went on. There was no snarky commentary when the horses nickered. No snide insights about the Bells or their history. Just...me. My own shallow thoughts echoing in the space Palemerious had occupied for fifteen years.
I kept reaching for him without meaning to. Turning inward to ask a question that would never be answered. It was like missing a tooth with your tongue—the absence more present than the thing itself had ever been.
By the time we got to the hospital with Claire and Steve, it was nearing eleven a.m. Grandma Kate had been moved to a private room, a luxury in the small hospital, but one naturally expected by her and supplied by Mr. Graham. Max’s parents had left a half hour earlier to take Sam out for breakfast, and I breathed a sigh of relief. I wasn’t up for them yet.One Graham Cracker at a timewas my motto, for as long as I could manage it. We left Steve and Claire in the waiting room and went up to see her.
The old woman eyed us soberly when we walked in. She had a portable oxygen mask set up beside her on the bed, but she was breathing fine without it, lifting the apparatus every few minutes to suck on it like an addict getting a fix.
“What’s going on with my room?” she croaked to Max, her voice still betraying the ravages of the night before. “Yourmother is going to use this as an excuse to throw out half my things. You know she is.”
He lifted his hands placatingly. “Half your things are probably not salvageable, Grandma. There was too much smoke damage.” He paused. “Can you remember what happened?”
“I had the damned damper open,” she snapped, fussily. She lifted the mask to her mouth and took a drag. “I wasn’t born yesterday, and I’m not dying tomorrow. I know when a damper is open or closed.”
“It’s a pretty good likelihood it was closed when you hit the floor.”
“Well, that’s as may be.” She sniffed. “I’m not going to deny falling asleep. That’s what good people do at night.”
She glowered at me. “You’re going to do it tonight, aren’t you?”
I lifted my brows, going for guileless. “Do what?”
She snorted. “I’m not an idiot. I know what Max here went looking for when he came back this spring and the horses were dead, and poor Frank was half out of his mind but trying to hold it together.”
She turned to Max, training her marble-bright eyes on him. “Your mother may have thought she was slumming when she married into the Grahams, but she chose smarter than she thought. Sooner or later that family was going to fall to rack and ruin, her and her sister both. She’s lucky to have Frank here to help pick up the pieces. And you, come to think of it. She had you.”
Her gaze swept back to me. “But you’ve been taking too damned long. Father Neismeth stopped in and saw me, and he told me what you got in the church. He asked how it went, and it about broke my heart to tell him you hadn’t done a damned thing yet. You haven’t even said a novena for your old grandma, Max.”
“Well, we had a few other things going on,” Max put in, gently, like he was talking to a horse he was about to put down. “It’ll be okay.”
