Even if she’d hatedwhenhe’d said it.
But it’d been beyond her, to breathe right again, to think straight again.I’m overreacting, part of her wanted to say, the same way he’d said to her last week, but she’d locked up, her mind like a thunderstorm: Nonna gone, Donny gone, Donny not even the nice man she’d always thought he’d been. Deepa leaving Verdant, Austin leaving San Diego. Nora’s bathroom not like it’d always been; Nora thinking she might leave Verdant, too. Jonah in rehab. Jonah somewhere else altogether. She’d looked across the room at Will and suddenly it was likehewas the wind that had been taken out of her; gusting through and blowing things apart. It didn’t matter that she knew it wasn’t really true; it didn’t matter that she knew she was being unfair.
She’d still asked him to go.
Stop, Nora, she scolded herself.You don’t have time for this; you can talk to him later.She needed to pack this bag; she needed a shower and a change of clothes; she needed to figure out what was next. She could deal with Will later. She moved quickly, opening Jonah’s closet to find the duffel bag he’d told her about, stuffing in the things he’d asked for, checking off items on her phone as she went along. When she finally had it all, she revisited her first instinct, going back to Jonah’s room to quickly make up his bed, hoping she wasn’t overstepping.
She was pulling his door closed behind her when she saw Marian on the landing.
“Where is he?” she said.
Nora lowered her brow, concerned over Marian’s apparent confusion. “He’s in the hosp—”
“Will,” Marian interrupted, coming down the hall toward her. “Where is he?”
“Oh, um,” she said, hoping she could pull off this lie. “He had to go into work.”
“That’s not what Jonah said. Jonah said he was there speaking to the doctor this morning, and then you kicked him out.”
Nora blinked. “I didn’t. How did he—he was asleep when I left.”
Marian shrugged. “Guess he didn’t sleep for long. He called us once you were gone. Probably he was faking.”
Nora sighed, stepped across the hall to her own door. “How did he sound? Mrs. Salas and I are going back soon. If you want to come—”
“What I want is to speak to Will about what the doctor said.”
“I spoke to the doctor too, Marian. You can ask me.”
“Yes, but Will is aprofessional. I don’t trust doctors, you know that.”
Nora ignored the jolt of satisfaction she felt at the revelation that Marian had moved Will from the category of “doctors” to “people she trusted.” Instead, she huffed in annoyance, opening her door, knowing already Marian—Marian who had once very much disliked Will Sterling!—was going to follow her in.
“I’ll give you his number,” she said. “You can call him.”
“Nora Clarke,” Marian said, her tone sharp. “What are youdoing?”
Nora stilled in place, so effective was Marian Goodnight’s classroom voice. When Nora was growing up, this was exactly how she always reacted to it—a total body lockdown that ensured she had stopped doing whatever it was Marian didn’t want her doing. But this time, her outward-facing freeze-up was accompanied by something similar on the inside, like the morning thunderstorm in her mind had abruptly ceased entirely.
She set down Jonah’s duffel and took a deep breath.
“Go right over there and sit down,” Marian said, pointing to the flowered couch that two nights ago Nora had promised herself she’d be rid of. When she sat, one of the upholstered buttons poked her left butt cheek, but she didn’t even bother to move.
“Can’t make coffee on this contraption,” Marian said from the kitchen, obviously referring to Nora’s fancy coffee machine, and then she set about filling up the old kettle. “So it’ll have to be tea.”
“Okay,” said Nora, even though she didn’t like tea. That kettle was Nonna’s.
Once Marian had it on the stove, she came back over and sat on the other side of the sofa, obviously avoiding any upholstered buttons.
“You’re just like her, you know,” she said. “Your grandmother.”
It wasn’t the first time Nora had heard this—not even the first time she’d heard it from Marian.
But it was the first time it didn’t sound all that much like a compliment.
“Now you know I loved her,” said Marian. “She was one of my best friends in the whole entire world, and I don’t suppose I’ll ever get over her not being here.”
Nora nodded, tears springing to her eyes. “Me neither.”
