Meg laughed. Anna laughed. Tyler actually laughed—all three of them, in the empty room, at ten-thirty at night.
Anna lifted her glass. “To coming out of the darkroom.”
Tyler glanced at her. He reached for his glass.
Meg reached for hers. They didn’t clink. They just drank.
“And,” Anna said, “if Sam hurts a single hair on either of their heads, we ride at dawn. No mercy.”
Tyler laughed.
“I’m serious.”
Meg laughed too. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”
Anna put her hand in the middle of the table. Palm down. Didn’t say anything.
Meg looked at her. Put her hand on top of Anna’s.
Tyler put his on top of Meg’s.
They held it for a second. Nobody said anything.
Meg sighed. “I hope if I’m lucky enough to ever be a parent, I’m half as good at it as you guys are.”
Then Meg lifted her glass and the others followed.
Tyler went back to the grill. Meg took up the broom. Anna turned the water back on. They cleaned the room in the quiet, the same as they’d cleaned it a hundred times—Tyler scraping, Anna washing, Meg sweeping. The way Margo had taught them without teaching them, just by doing it in front of them every day until they knew how.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Margo got back to Bernie’s at three-fifteen with two paper bags of groceries and a glass jar of soup wrapped in a dish towel.
She’d dropped him at his place at ten that morning, walked him in, made sure he could get to the bathroom and back without help, put the antibiotic and the painkiller on the kitchen counter where he wouldn’t miss them, and then she had driven herself home with the explicit intention of taking a nap.
Instead she had stripped the bed she had not slept in for two days, started a load of laundry, decided the load was going to be larger than that, gone to the hardware store for two new lightbulbs she’d been meaning to replace since November, and then to Pavilions with a list of what she’d noticed wasn’t in his refrigerator that morning.
The list had grown. By the time she checked out it included a loaf of sourdough, a half-gallon of milk, six eggs, a bag of mandarins, a small jar of honey, a wedge of sharp cheddar, two cans of the soup he liked when he was sick, and the ingredients for the one she preferred to make herself. She drove home, made it, wrapped the jar in a dish towel, and drove back.
When she let herself in, he was where she had left him—his chair in the living room, the afghan over his knees, the walker within reach. The television was off. He had a book open in his lap that he was not reading. His eyes were closed.
“Bernard? Are you asleep?”
He opened one eye. “I’m resting my eyes.”
She put the bags on the counter and came back to look at him.
“Did you take the antibiotic?” she asked.
He shook the bottle. “Yes.”
“And the painkiller?”
“Half of one.” Bernie closed the book in his lap and set it on the table. “They make me sleep too long. I want to be awake when people are here.”
“There’s nobody here.”
“You’re here.”
