Part 4
Dorothy Ames lived seven blocks from Harbor View in the downstairs half of a narrow duplex. Thomas left Tilly with Edna at the church office, then drove while Rebecca held Margaret’s green book open on her lap.
Neither of them spoke until they reached Alder Street. A ceramic planter painted bright blue sat beside Dorothy’s porch, bare except for two dead geranium stems. The spare key was taped beneath the rim exactly where Margaret had written.
Thomas knocked first. He called Dorothy’s name through the door and waited long enough to hear the refrigerator humming inside.
Then came a scrape, followed by a voice too weak to carry a full word.
Rebecca was already dialing 911 when Thomas unlocked the door.
Dorothy lay on the kitchen floor between the table and the lower cabinets. An afghan covered one leg, and a drinking glass had rolled beneath a chair. She was awake, but her skin looked gray and papery. One hand gripped the table leg as though she had been trying for hours to pull herself upright.
Thomas knelt beside her without moving her. “Dorothy, it’s Thomas Avery from St. Mark’s. An ambulance is coming.”
Her eyelids lifted. “Margaret?”
The question landed between him and Rebecca.
Thomas could not bring himself to say that Margaret was dead while Dorothy was fighting to stay conscious. Rebecca crouched on the other side of her and took the older woman’s hand.
“She sent us,” Rebecca said.
It was not literally true, yet Thomas knew he would never correct it.
The paramedics arrived within minutes. Their questions came quickly: medications, dialysis schedule, allergies, emergency contact, how long she might have been down. Dorothy could answer only some of them. Thomas found the rest in Margaret’s notes, including the name of a nephrology clinic and a warning about penicillin.
One paramedic looked from the green book to Thomas. “This hers?”
“It belonged to a friend.”
“Good friend.”
Rebecca turned away toward the sink.
As the stretcher passed through the doorway, Dorothy opened her eyes again. “Tell Margaret I’m sorry I missed her call.”
Rebecca walked beside her as far as the porch. “She knew,” she said. “She always knew when people needed another call.”
After the ambulance left, they stood in Dorothy’s kitchen surrounded by evidence of a life interrupted but not ended: unopened mail, a cardigan draped over a chair, toast still inside the toaster, a bag of birdseed waiting near the back door. Rebecca set the fallen glass in the sink and wiped water from the linoleum with a dish towel.
“My mother knew exactly where the key was,” she said.
“She probably made Dorothy tell her.”
“She knew her dialysis clinic. She knew her medication.” Rebecca folded the towel twice before laying it over the counter. “I couldn’t have named Mom’s cardiologist.”
Thomas leaned against the table. “Knowing less than you wish you knew is not the same as loving less.”
Rebecca’s expression tightened. “You sound as though you’ve practiced that sentence.”
He thought of the blinking voicemail light and said nothing.
Back at Harbor View, Rebecca returned to sorting the bedroom. She had lost some of her mechanical efficiency; objects now slowed her down. A scarf brought her hand to her mouth. A bottle of perfume made her sit on the edge of the bed. When she found an old shoebox on the closet shelf, tied with a faded red ribbon, she carried it to the kitchen as carefully as if it held glass.
Her name was written across the lid.
Inside were birthday cards, school programs, newspaper clippings, and photographs spanning more than forty years. Margaret had kept a construction-paper bookmark Rebecca made in second grade and the hospital bracelet from the birth of Rebecca’s son. Beneath those lay a boarding pass from the last trip Margaret had taken to Chicago and a restaurant receipt with three words written on the back: Rebecca laughed tonight.
Rebecca sat down hard.
“She made it sound as if visiting me exhausted her,” she said.
“Both things may have been true.”
At the bottom of the box was an envelope addressed in the same compact blue handwriting as the note to Thomas. Under Rebecca’s name, Margaret had added a second line.
For the day we have no more time to be stubborn.
Rebecca ran her thumb along the sealed edge. “Did she write letters for everyone?”
“Maybe only for the people she was afraid she had failed.”
“That would be a very Margaret way to apologize—after no one could interrupt.”
Thomas moved toward the door. “I can give you privacy.”
“No.” Rebecca’s fingers tightened around the envelope. “If this makes me hate her, I need someone here who remembers why I loved her.”
She opened the letter. The first page shook in her hands. My dear Rebecca, I know you believe I chose this town over you. The truth is harder, and less flattering to both of us…
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