Nina’s room looked the most lived-in, with posters on the walls and a low platform bed made up with purple sheets, which looked cool against the pale blue walls. She misses her daughter, Kathleen thought.
The kitchen floor was lined with newspaper. Joyce had finished the cabinets and walls in a rich tan. Random swatches of dark purple bloomed in several spots below the chair rail. “I still haven’t quite decided whether I can live with this color,” she said, handing Kathleen a long-sleeved shirt and one of Nina’s baseball caps.
“It’s lovely. The colors are so perfect. Where did you get the idea to paint that one wall darker in the living room?”
“I hired a decorator to tell me what to do,” Joyce said a little sheepishly.
“But why hasn’t Frank seen it?” Kathleen asked softly. “He hasn’t even been up on weekends?”
“He’s too busy.” Joyce waved her hand as if she were shooing a bug. “I don’t even care anymore.”
“You don’t care?”
“Let’s go to the beach.”
Kathleen was quiet as they drove over the hill, concerned and confused about the way Joyce had answered — or hadn’t answered — her questions about Frank.
“I’m going to drop you off and park,” Joyce said.
Kathleen crossed the bridge and sat down to wait. It was a sun-worshiper’s day, hot and almost cloudless, with a cooling offshore breeze. Kathleen shuddered with pleasure as the warmth soaked through her clothes. She buried her hands in the sand, wiggling her fingers down through the soft, sun-baked layer, pushing into the cool, packed surface beneath.
“I feel like a vampire released from the curse of doom,” Kathleen said, wiping her hands as Joyce sat down. “I’ve been avoiding the sun. I wonder if that’s making things
even worse.”
“Things?”
“The treatments, I guess. And August. It’s almost August. August is . . .” Kathleen stopped. Why tell her? she thought.
Joyce tried to find Kathleen’s eyes under the brim of the hat.
“August is hard for me.”
Kathleen glanced up to see Joyce looking at her, waiting, nodding. Oh, why not. “August is hard for me. Because my son died in August.”
Joyce’s mouth opened and closed. After a moment she asked, “You had three?”
“Danny. The middle one,” Kathleen said quietly. “He died on August fourteenth.”
“Danny.”
“He was three years old. Hal was four. Nearly five.” Kathleen straightened her shoulders and looked right at Joyce, who reached over and put her hand on top of Kathleen’s.
“They were playing in the front yard on their bicycles. Danny was on Hal’s old tricycle. Hal had a new two-wheeler with training wheels. The phone rang.” Kathleen stopped.
“I went inside to get it.” It had been so long since she had told this story, the words seemed small and far away in her mouth.
“The driver was an old man. Too old to be driving. He lost control of the car. He wasn’t even speeding, really. I think he was going thirty miles an hour, if that.
“But he drove up onto the lawn and into the driveway and . . . He didn’t even know what he’d done. When he got out of the car, he . . . Well, he shouldn’t have been driving. I couldn’t blame him. I blamed his daughter. He probably had Alzheimer’s, though I don’t know if we called it that then.
“That was on August eighth,” Kathleen said with a catch in her throat. “At first, we thought he had a chance. Pat came that night. Did I tell you that she was a nurse? She slept with us in the hospital. She talked to every doctor, every specialist. The nurses were wonderful. He had the best care because of Pat.
“But there was too much damage. To his brain.
“We let him go on the fourteenth.” Kathleen paused and her shoulders drooped. She pulled her hand gently from under Joyce’s and wrapped her arms around her knees.
“Oh, God,” Joyce whispered.