“Client trumps caregiver.”
“I know. The thing is…helping her makes me think about things I buried a long time ago.”
“Things?” Abigail says. “Or people?”
I look at her and raise my brows.
“Buried literally,” she asks, “or figuratively?”
“Figuratively,” I reply, smiling faintly.
“Dawn. What’s the first rule of hospice work?”
It’s not about you.
I pick at the banana bread, and a random thought pops into my head. Back in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the United Kingdom, when someone died, a piece of bread would be placed on their chest to soak up their sins. Then, the village sin-eater was paid to consume it—taking on the guilt and the shame and the lies, leaving the soul of the deceased light enough to go to heaven.
“What are you going to do?” Abigail asks.
I take a bite of banana bread and think of Win Morse and her missing lover. I wonder what happened to sin-eaters when they died, when there was no one left to absolve them. I wonder if, with every bite, they tasted poison.
—
BEFORE WE LEAVE,Abigail asks how Brian is doing.
This morning, when he came downstairs smelling like fresh shampoo and soap, his hair still slicked back, I handed him his travel mug of coffee. This is a scene so common for the two of us that by now, it should have caused a repetitive motion injury. But today, instead of distractedly taking the mug and collecting all the things he needs to bring to the lab and leaving without saying goodbye, he stopped in front of me. “My grandmother used to say that cooking was love,” he said. “I don’t know if coffee counts as food, but still…thanks. For the cup of love.”
He blushed when he said it, and the tips of his ears went red. It was so un-Brian I almost laughed, but something held me in check. Maybe this would be the newus:appreciating what we have, instead of expecting it. “You’re welcome,” I said.
“Brian’s great,” I tell Abigail.
—
SINCEMERET REFUSESto go back to STEM camp, I find a new summer program. This one isn’t just science-oriented, but takes a Renaissance approach to gifted-and-talented education, marrying technology and the classics and Latin and phys ed. Meret is cautiously excited about the idea, about beginning fresh. We picked out an outfit last night, a top whose color turned her eyes an otherworldly blue.
At the end of the day I drive to the school where the program is housed and wait near the front entrance. When I see her exit the building, I wave. The girl she is walking with says something and smiles. Meret is a mirror, reflecting that same smile back at her.Okay,I think, letting out the breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.So far, so good.
“How did it go?” I ask, as she slides into the passenger seat.
Meret’s hair covers her face as she ducks away from me. “Fine.”
“How are the other kids?”
She shrugs. “They’re okay. I sat with three girls who’ll be in the same high school as me this fall.”
“That’s great.” I wonder if the girl she walked out with is one of them. “Any interesting teachers?”
Meret glances away, and I realize that her chin is trembling.
“Hey,” I say, touching her arm. “What’s going on?”
The tears start. “Nothing. It’s stupid. Everyone’s nice. Everyone’sreallynice.” She wipes her cheeks. “Everything was good, you know? Like, I thought I looked decent. And no one was saying anything terrible about me. But it turns out they didn’t have to. I sat at lunch with people, but I didn’t actually eat, because none of them did. Someone was talking about a kid who has alopecia and how terrible it would be to look like that, and I laughed. Ilaughedbecause I was so glad it wasn’t me they were ragging on. Even though they’re awful, I’d rather be like them than like me.”
“Meret—”
“Then I had gym. Today we just got a tour of the locker room from Ms. Thibodeau—the tennis coach. She showed us the showers and the lockers and then she looked over at me and said there’s a changing room, too, with a curtain, if you don’t want everyone looking. I thought she was saying I need to be hidden. But—”
I am barely aware of getting out of the parked car, but I do. I jog behind the school to the tennis courts, where a woman in a track suit is carrying a wire basket filled with bright yellow balls. “Excuse me,” I say, boiling. “Are you Ms. Thibodeau?”
