Chapter 7: The Address She Didn't Know He Had
Dad was on his feet before I could ask who sent it.
"Stay here," he said.
"Where are you going?"
"I'll be back." He grabbed his keys from the counter.
"Lock the door after me.
Don't open it for anyone."
"Dad —"
"I mean it." He looked at me hard.
"I'll explain everything when I get back.
I promise."
Then he was gone.
The front door clicked shut.
A moment later I heard the car back out of the drive.
Grandma and I sat in the kitchen in the sudden quiet.
"He knows where she is," I said.
"It seems so."
"How?"
She shook her head slowly.
"I don't know.
But your father has been planning this longer than tonight." She looked toward the window.
"That call to his lawyer — you don't reach a lawyer at this hour unless you already have a relationship built on exactly this kind of emergency."
I thought about that.
Eight months.
That's how long the withdrawals went back.
But Dad had said he found the restaurant receipt two months ago and said nothing.
What if the planning had started then?
What if the calm — the terrible, flat calm he'd used in the bedroom — wasn't shock?
What if it was the end of a very long wait?
My phone buzzed.
A text from Dad.
*Thomas is coming at 7.
Make sure Grandma is ready.
Don't let her cancel.*
I looked at Grandma.
"Dad says Thomas is still coming at seven."
She looked at the clock on the wall.
It was six-ten.
"Then I suppose," she said, standing slowly, "you had better fix what that tissue did to my lipstick."
I almost laughed.
It came out strange — half laugh, half something else.
But it was real.
We went back to the bedroom.
I sat her down at the mirror again.
The brushes were still on the dresser where I'd left them.
The gift box was on the floor, the paper gone — Dad had taken it.
I worked quietly.
She sat still.
"You're good at this," she said, watching me in the mirror.
"I've been practicing."
"On who?"
"YouTube.
Mostly." I blended the corner of her eye.
"You were my first real person."
"I'm honored."
"You should be.
You have good bone structure.
Makes it easier."
She smiled.
"Your grandfather used to say that."
"That you had good bone structure?"
"That I was easy." A pause.
"He meant easy to love.
But yes, sometimes the other thing too."
I laughed.
A real one this time.
The doorbell rang at seven on the dot.
Thomas was tall.
White-haired.
He wore a jacket that had been ironed carefully and shoes that had been polished.
He held a small bunch of flowers — not roses, something simpler, something that looked like he'd chosen them himself rather than pointing at a display.
He saw Grandma in the hallway and stopped.
He didn't say anything for a moment.
Then he said, "Eleanor."
Just her name.
Like it was something he'd been saving up.
Grandma's chin lifted slightly.
Her shoulders straightened.
The woman who'd been holding a tissue and trying to disappear an hour ago was completely gone.
"Thomas," she said.
He held out the flowers.
She took them.
They stood there smiling at each other like fourteen-year-olds, which I supposed, in some part of themselves, they still were.
I closed the front door behind them and stood alone in the hallway.
Dad still wasn't back.
His last text had been forty minutes ago.
I sent him one: *She's gone to dinner.
You okay?*
Three minutes passed.
Then: *Coming home.
Don't worry.*
May you like
Then, thirty seconds later, one more message.
*She's not going to be a problem anymore.*
