I was getting angry. And starting to wonder if Nan really believed me. “How can you be so nonchalant?”
“Maybe because I believe if it’s my time, it’s my time.”
Tina came back then. “Dr. Wentworth is in the middle of a case, but he gave me the go-ahead to run some tests.” Silently she drew the blood, five or six vials from Nan’s already depleted right arm. “He’ll be up when we get the results.” She turned at the door, adding, “I’ll be at the station. Call me if you need anything.”
The waiting had begun. I didn’t know what to do with myself and walked to the window, my stomach sour and nerves hair-trigger tense. Outside, the sky was still blue, I’m sure birds were still singing and the air still smelled warm and fertile. I didn’t give a damn about any of it. It looked surreal, like a painting or a stage set.
“Cassie, come. Sit with me.” Nan’s voice, still soft, still calm, brought me back to the room. Mechanically I obeyed, pulling a chair to her side, piling it with pillows as I did every time we sat together like this in the hospital. Me by her bedside. “You know what I was remembering this morning?”
“What?”
“The day your mother first brought you to meet me.” Nan shook her head, smiling. “They drove all day for two days, her and your father, sixteen hours from Bering, Kansas, in his new Chrysler.” Nan added softly, “God, he loved that car.”
I couldn’t believe Nan wanted to talk about this right now. I bit my tongue and nodded.
“It was a day very much like today. Sunny, mid-spring, just starting to warm. It is warm out today, right?”
“Yes.” It was strange to think that to Nan, it could be twenty or eighty degrees outside and the sky and clouds would look the same. She hadn’t been out today, hadn’t felt the breeze, smelled the dirt. Maybe never would again. It made me want to run from the room and find a wheelchair or, the hell with it, push her out there, bed and all. But we couldn’t leave. Not until we saw the doctor and the results.
“In fact, it may well have been today,” Nan was saying. “It would have been about this time of year. You had just turned five months old.”
“That’s the first time you met me?”
“I know. It seems odd, doesn’t it? But your father, Daniel, was tied up with his job at the university, couldn’t take enough leave to come. And Georgia didn’t want to make such a long trip alone. Looking back, it seems remiss of me not to have visited them to see my first, my only grandchild. Of course, in retrospect, I wished I’d gone out more not just to see you, but to see her.”
Clumsily Nan reached for the water on her nightstand. I started to help her, but she waved me away, carefully clutching the glass in her veined hand.
“You were such a beautiful family, standing at my doorstep. Georgia’s hair was just like yours, nearly black, almost blue in the sunlight. You were so little, Cass. It was silly, and I never said it to Georgia, but I felt like I could see myself in you. Even that early on.”
Another time, I’d have been fascinated by this conversation. I knew so little about my parents, their faces only photographs, their voices, their touch imagined. Nan rarely talked about them—I could tell it was hard for her—but I didn’t really want to hear about them now. My insides were churning and I was as jittery as if I’d been mainlining coffee.
“You only stayed the weekend,” Nan went on. “Four days of driving for just two days of visit. My fault again, I’m sure. Back at work on Monday, wouldn’t dream of taking time off. Not even for my daughter.” She shook her head and, for me too, it was hard to believe. So unlike the Nan I knew.
“And the next time I saw you,” she said, “was in Kansas. You were two, no longer a baby. I was there to bury your … parents. And to bring you home.”
“That must have been terrible, Nan.”
She nodded. “It was. It was so unreal, a jumble from the minute I got the call about the crash. Some of it I barely remember and some is … unforgettable.”
“And then, after that, we came back here. You and me?”
“As quickly as we could. Once I’d made up my mind to take you in, I wanted it done. Wanted away from that town. There was some talk of Daniel’s parents raising you out there, but Paula—Daniel’s mom—knew she couldn’t take you in right then as sick as her husband was. They must have hated seeing you leave with a virtual stranger. We’d talked about my bringing you back after her husband passed. She knew it was coming. But I don’t think she knew what a toll it would take on her. She was gone by the year’s end.”
“So you were stuck with me then.”
She smiled. “I was. And by that point, there wasn’t a chance in hell I’d have given you up.”
Nan and I were startled by the soft whisper of the door opening. Tina stuck her head in. “Dr. Wentworth’s on his way with the labs.”
My stomach rolled. I hadn’t forgotten what we were waiting for or what the soft glow around Nan meant, but listening to her had taken my mind off it for at least those few minutes. In my lap, my hands were clasped, as if by holding firmly to each other they could keep today, tomorrow, all my days from unraveling as I was sure they soon would.
Nan kept right on talking as if Tina had just popped in to say lunch was coming. “I was a different person before you came to me,” Nan said, her voice still calm and assured, but sad too. “Maybe not a very likable one. So much changed after the accident. After Georgia died. Every day I wish I could have her back, but then I get to thinking what I was like before and wonder if it would have mattered anyway. Would I ever have gotten around to visiting more? Telling her how much I loved her? If she had lived, I’m sure you and I never would have been as close as we are, Cassie. Not that I am ever, for a minute, glad that Georgia is gone, but having you has been the best part of my life. Has, I believe, made all the difference in these last fourteen years being happy ones or not.”
She stopped and, though it was my turn to speak, I was without words. Nan didn’t seem to mind. She looked away, clearly still thinking about her daughter. My mother.
“The thing is, Cass … and you know this about me … I believe things take their own course, happen for a reason. I wasn’t always that way. Used to think I could control everything. I’m much happier for having stopped trying.”