Chapter 4: What Richard Had Never Said Out Loud
No one spoke.
Chloe looked at me.
I looked at Mom.
Mom looked at Richard.
"Then whose son is he?" Mom said.
Richard folded his hands on the table.
He looked at them for a moment before he answered.
"He's my nephew.
My younger brother's boy.
Danny's boy."
"Danny," Mom repeated.
"Danny d*ed fourteen months ago.
Heart condition.
He was forty-nine." Richard's voice stayed level, but his jaw tightened on the last word.
"He and Diane had been together for six years.
They never married.
When Danny went, Diane was left alone with Thomas and no support system.
No family nearby.
Danny's parents are gone.
Mine are gone.
It was just me."
Mom sat down across from him.
"So you've been going there every night."
"Every night that I can.
Thomas has a metabolic condition.
He needs his medication at a specific time or he gets very sick, very fast.
Diane works two jobs.
She can't always be home by seven-thirty.
So I am."
Chloe's voice came out smaller than usual.
"Why didn't you just tell us?"
Richard looked at her.
Not defensively.
Tiredly.
"Because I didn't know how.
I met your grandmother six weeks after Danny d*ed.
I wasn't supposed to be happy.
I wasn't supposed to be sitting at anyone's dinner table feeling like I had something worth coming back to." He paused.
"Every time I tried to explain, it felt like I was asking for something I hadn't earned yet."
Mom was quiet for a long moment.
"And Diane?
She was in my gardening club."
"She stopped going because she was embarrassed.
She didn't want anyone to know how much she was struggling.
She didn't know I was seeing you until about two months ago.
When I told her, she asked me to keep it separate a little longer.
She was afraid of how it would look."
"How what would look?"
"That the woman whose partner d*ed was being cared for by the man who'd started dating someone new." Richard looked at Mom directly.
"She wasn't protecting herself.
She was protecting you.
She didn't want you to feel like you were sharing me with a tragedy you didn't know about."
Mom pressed her lips together.
"She should have let me decide that for myself."
"Yes," Richard said.
"She should have.
And I should have told you months ago.
I know that.
I'm not asking you to say it's fine.
I'm asking you to understand why I couldn't find the words."
The table was quiet again.
Then Mom reached across and picked up the care schedule.
She looked at it for a long time.
Thomas's name at the top.
The medication times.
Richard's handwriting in every column, neat and consistent, seven nights a week.
She set it back down.
"How sick is he?" she said.
"Thomas."
"Manageable, if the routine holds.
The doctors are cautiously optimistic.
He's a tough little boy."
Mom nodded slowly.
Then she said something I hadn't expected.
"Does he like chocolate pie?"
Richard blinked.
"I — I don't know.
I've never brought him any."
"Then next Sunday," Mom said, "you'll bring him some.
And you'll introduce me to Diane properly.
And we'll figure out the rest from there."
Richard stared at her.
His eyes went glassy.
He looked away fast, toward the window, and pressed two fingers against his mouth.
"Helen—"
"Don't," she said gently.
"Just say yes."
He nodded.
"Yes."
Chloe, sitting at the end of the table, let out a long, shaky breath.
She'd been holding it so long her shoulders dropped two inches when it left her.
I thought that was the end of it.
I thought we'd found the shape of the thing and now we just had to live inside it carefully for a while.
May you like
But the next morning, Diane called Mom's phone directly.
And she wasn't calling to thank her.
