Diana waits. Blue dots bubble on the screen.
“Mama?”
“One second.”
Why are you asking me?
Grace says you might have information and that you might be willing to help me.
Phoebe continues to talk, but her words stay in the background, fuzzy and unclear, as Diana clenches the phone and wills Jessica to write again.
Saturday. Noon. I’ll text you where in a few days.
Thank you. I really appreciate this.
“I’m hungry,” Duncan says, entering through the back door with Jadyn at his heels.
“Can I stay for lunch?” Mira asks.
“Me too?” asks Jadyn. “My mom said I can.”
“We’re having veggie burgers. Mira, I’ll tell your mom you’re joining us.” Diana sends a fast text to Lakshmi. “Girls, clean up that slime, and all of you, wash your hands.” Diana puts her hand in her pocket and rubs her thumb against what she’s come to think of as Grace’s rock.Soon,she thinks.
The night before she’s scheduled to meet Jessica, as Diana lies awake, watching the minutes click by on the bedside clock, she remembers another night in this bed. It was about a month after Tom’s diagnosis, and she could see he was changing, pulling away. All she wanted was to keep him here, make it so he could stay with her.
She turned over, and he grabbed her, pulling her across the bed and into his arms. He’d stopped shaving, so when he kissed her, his stubble chafed her chin. His body threw off such heat, such life; how could he be sick?
They paused only to remove their clothes. Neither spoke as he rolled on top of her. She clasped his increasingly angular, thin body, enveloping him with her curves, her vitality.If only I can make him well,Diana thought as tears slid down her cheeks. Tom licked the wetness away and gently kissed along her eyebrows, down to her cheekbones, then to her mouth again, urgently this time. She ran her fingers down his back, his skin smooth under her touch. He shifted to look at her, and he kept her gaze as he entered her, his eyes full of love. She buried her face in the crook of his neck, inhaling his snowfall-tinged scent, promising herself she’d remember.
It was the last time they made love.
Now, alone in their bed, her hands empty, she wishes again they had more time. That he trusted her with all of himself.
And she wonders what Jessica will tell her.
Chapter Thirty-One
Diana parks her car in front of a dented “Reserved for Fiona’s Customers Only” sign. With a faded sticker warning against drunk driving affixed across its bottom third, the sign cantilevers over a modest patch of grass filled with trash: empty Dunkin’ Donuts cups, crushed beer cans, and torn plastic bags, the forgotten fragments of urban life.
Remembering her promise to Lakshmi, Diana takes her phone from its dashboard perch—she needed the GPS app to get here, the narrow and circuitous streets in this part of Boston unfamiliar to her—and makes sure someone knows where she is.Hey Lax, she texts.Meeting Jessica at a bar in South Boston called Fiona’s. Fill you in after xo.She doesn’t wait for a response, dropping the phone in her purse and listening to it bang against Grace’s rock.
Diana steps out of her minivan into a perfect spring day masquerading as summer. The sky overhead is a sunny, cloudless blue, and the air is brand new, even in the middle of the city. The forecast calls for a high of eighty-five, a wave of heat that regularly comes this time of year, making late May feel more like August.
Figuring out what to wear to meet Jessica was a challenge. Nothing too obvious or desperate, nothing that indicates how nervous she is either. Diana settled on a blue cotton dress with a braided rattan belt, bare legs with brown leather boots, and gold hoop earrings. She centers her belt on her waist and prays she comes across as presentable and, hopefully, sympathetic.
Pushing her sunglasses down from the top of her head, Diana takes in her surroundings. Fiona’s is housed in a squat, windowless brick bunker. In front, traffic backs up for more than a block, cars honking at the intersection, drivers anxious to make it through before the light turns from amber to red. The weekend is underway, and everyone wants to be somewhere else.
Getting here called for subterfuge, an approach Diana found all too easy. She concocted a story about needing to catch up at work, and as predicted, before she even asked, her father offered to take the kids for the day. “We’ll go fishing,” he said. “Your mother will pack a picnic. We’ll make it an adventure.”
Diana didn’t need to lie to her parents. She can’t let Duncan get too caught up in her search for Jessica, but her parents would have helped had they known where she was headed. Deceit—or, at least, hiding the truth—is second nature to her now.
She stumbles at this realization, righting herself before she falls. How much she’s changed since she found Tom’s letter.
Or perhaps she’s finally seeing herself clearly.
A metal plate readingFiona’sis bolted in place at eye level on the bar’s front door, and the outline of what appears to be a fist is smashed in above the doorknob. Diana slings her purse onto her shoulder and opens the door.
Fiona’s is exactly what she thought a South Boston bar on a Saturday morning would be like: dimly lit, the air thick with the yeasty smell of beer, the walls covered in Boston sports team posters. A large pool table takes up the far left corner, with round tables scattered around the scuffed linoleum floor. Hugging the right side of the space is a wraparound bar, where a man slumps on a stool, gawking at the wall-mounted television turned to a twenty-four-hour news channel.
