Part 6
By evening the repaired latch no longer rattled in the lake wind. Nora noticed but did not praise it, which Gabriel took as evidence that some part of her remained intact.
The hospice weeks came apart in ordinary places. Nora could discuss a brick-repointing bid with Elise on Tuesday and fail to recognize the coffeemaker on Wednesday. Some mornings she ate toast at the motel desk. On others, the smell drove her back to bed.
No one turned every lucid hour into an occasion. Elise brought payroll questions and once lost patience when Nora tried to reopen a decision she had already transferred. Maisie read aloud from a mystery novel, skipping descriptions she considered slow. Gabriel changed furnace filters, kept the medication log where the nurse had placed it, and went to work.
Nora became irritated when people answered questions she had not asked and frightened when words left too quickly. The hospice nurse taught them to offer one choice at a time and answer fear without arguing.
One night Nora woke certain that the room belonged to someone else. She pulled at the blanket and tried to stand.
Gabriel sat where she could see him. “You’re at Harborlight.”
“Which—” Her mouth worked around the missing word.
“Six.” He held up the brass tag. “Maisie’s calendar is in the closet. Elise is coming tomorrow. I’m here tonight.”
Nora looked at the tag until the room returned to her. “Blue?”
“At our house. Sleeping on my clean shirts.”
“Good cat.”
Gabriel did not correct that judgment.
When Blue’s other three kittens had gone to their new homes, Maisie began bringing Blue and Cricket for short visits. Blue investigated the hospice bed, rejected the padded chair prepared for her, and settled on the old wool blanket at Nora’s feet. Cricket attacked the oxygen tubing once. After that he stayed at the duplex during Blue’s visits, with Mrs. Alvarez checking on him if Gabriel and Maisie remained overnight.
During one clear afternoon, Nora asked Gabriel to open Calvin’s locked cabinet. They found tax folders, motel ashtrays, bent keys, and photographs, but no confession. Calvin had saved a school portrait of Nora and a picture of Gabriel repairing the sign; neither had been displayed.
“He kept both,” Gabriel said.
Nora turned the two pictures facedown. “He still left them in a box.”
They chose what they wanted while she was able to ask. Gabriel took a worn block plane with Calvin’s initials and one photograph of his mother behind the front desk. Nora kept the coffee can of useless keys beside her bed. Then Gabriel detached the Room Six tag from the master ring and gave it to Maisie, as Nora had promised.
“You still need it,” she told Nora.
“You can keep track of it for me.”
Maisie threaded the tag onto the green hair tie that had belonged to Ana. She placed both around her wrist, then held Nora’s hand until Nora’s fingers loosened in sleep.
By the fourth week, Nora slept more than she woke. The nurse explained the changes in her breathing and told them hearing might remain after she stopped answering. Elise sat near the window with project photographs in her lap. Gabriel took the chair beside the bed. Maisie climbed carefully onto the mattress, leaving room for Blue at Nora’s feet.
“It’s Maisie,” she said. “Cricket knocked over the water again. Dad said a bad word, but not the worst one.”
Gabriel heard Elise laugh once and cover it with her hand.
Maisie continued. She told Nora that she had kept the old pickup card with AUNT written beside Nora’s name. Then she pressed her forehead to Nora’s shoulder.
Gabriel told Nora the motel pipes were sound and the overnight aide had been paid. Elise told her the firm had made payroll and no one had changed the name on the door.
Before dawn, Nora’s breathing became shallow. Gabriel held her hand and felt each pause lengthen. Blue remained curled over her ankles, heavy and warm.
Nora took one more breath. The next one did not come.
Gabriel called hospice. The nurse arrived twenty minutes later and confirmed what he already knew: Nora had died. Knowing did not tell him what to do with his sister’s hand, still warm between both of his.
Elise stood and walked into the bathroom. The tap ran for several seconds though no one had asked for water. Maisie remained on the bed beside Nora, her back perfectly straight, the brass motel tag pressed into her palm.
Gabriel had seen that stillness once before. When Ana died, Maisie had sat beneath the hospital television and counted the floor tiles until a nurse found crayons. For two days she had answered every question with yes or no. For weeks she had refused to cry where Gabriel could see her.
“You can get down if you want,” he said.
Maisie did not move.
Maisie pulled the green hair tie from her wrist and tried to place the Room Six tag in Nora’s open hand. It slipped through Nora’s fingers and struck the bed rail.
“She told you to keep it,” Gabriel said.
“But she doesn’t need the room now.” Maisie tried again. The first sob came out as a cough. The next shook her hard enough that Gabriel reached the bed before she could slide from it. He gathered her against him while Elise returned and put one hand between Maisie’s shoulders. Blue stayed curled at Nora’s feet, watching them through half-closed eyes.
Harborlight sold in late spring. On the day Nora’s estate emptied Room Six, Maisie took down the visit calendar and packed it with the coffee can of bent keys, though none opened anything they owned.
The motel buyer planned to repair four cabins and remove the two beyond saving. Gabriel did not ask which fate belonged to Six. He locked the office, returned the master ring to the attorney, and drove home with the brass tag still looped around Maisie’s wrist.
On the first cold evening in October, seven months after Nora’s death, Gabriel and Maisie stopped at a pet-supply store for new collar tags. Cricket had chewed his address nearly flat, and Blue had lost hers beneath the duplex porch. Both cats had officially become theirs after Blue was spayed in April.
Maisie read their street address aloud. “What if we move?”
“We buy new tags.”
“Then these would be wrong.”
“Only after we moved.” Gabriel waited while she considered that. “Tonight they’re right.”
Maisie no longer wore Ana’s sweatshirt every night, though it remained folded under her pillow. The old pickup card with Nora’s name stayed in her desk. Some evenings she talked about Nora; on others she was angry at everyone who had known more about the ending than she had. Gabriel stopped telling her what else to feel.
At the duplex, Maisie took out her own door key. She had fastened the Room Six tag to it with Ana’s green hair tie, a poor key ring that Gabriel checked every few days for wear.
The brass tag tapped the new lock while she worked the key in. Inside, the radiator had begun its familiar ticking. Blue waited on the entry mat, and Cricket shot between Maisie’s boots as soon as the door opened.
Maisie switched on the hall light, hung her key on the low hook Gabriel had installed for her, and shut the cold outside.