Part 4
Nancy left the hospital carrying the list of things Leah wanted from the apartment. It was short: Ben’s sleepers, the folding crib, the green folder with his medical papers, two work shirts, Otis’s food. At the bottom, Leah had written her own clothes last, squeezed into the space beside the crease.
Paul drove Nancy back to his house. Otis met them at the door and pushed his head against her knee, wearing a clipped patch on one foreleg from the veterinary clinic. Nancy crouched awkwardly and let him lean. He smelled of unfamiliar soap and the old blanket from Paul’s truck.
“You caused a commotion,” she told him.
Paul carried in the groceries. “Let him have his supper.”
Otis walked to the kitchen, checked the corner where Paul had put his bowl, and waited. The ordinary certainty of it hurt Nancy more than his shaved leg. She had spent two days trying to understand what he had known, and he was interested in the bag Paul was opening.
That night, Nancy used the dining table for the laundry’s callback list. Paul had customers’ numbers on his phone, but she wanted them on paper so she could see who was waiting. She drew a line through each person reached, leaving a small empty box beside names requiring another call.
Talia rang while Nancy was halfway through. She asked about Ben first, then said she needed to know whether there would be work next Saturday.
“I’ll pay you for this one,” Nancy said.
“Thank you. I need to pick up shifts somewhere if it goes longer.”
“Of course.”
“And I can’t keep answering the shop phone during class. Paul forwarded it to me because I know the customers, but I’ve got an exam.”
Nancy looked at the list she had just made. She had been thinking of Talia as somebody who would naturally help until things settled, the way a spare towel naturally found its way beneath a leak.
“Have Paul send it to me,” she said. “I’ll tell him tonight.”
Talia exhaled. “Okay.”
Before hanging up, the girl said she kept remembering the call up the stairs. If she had stayed, if she had insisted Nancy sounded wrong—
“You called for help when we needed it,” Nancy said. “You don’t have to work backward through the afternoon.”
She heard the certainty in her own voice. She could give it to Talia easily, yet after the call she sat for several minutes trying to recover each small thing she had done before the bell rang.
On Tuesday, they were permitted a limited retrieval of personal belongings after the building had been ventilated and checked. Equipment remained shut down, and the apartment was still unavailable for living. Paul came with Nancy, carrying empty laundry bags so they would not have to make extra trips.
The kitchen looked indecently familiar. Ben’s bottle stood where she had left it; Leah’s note was beneath the corner of the grocery circular. Nancy put the bottle in a trash bag before she could imagine offering it to him again.
In Leah’s room, the two clinic shirts were hanging from a curtain rod. One had a little repair beneath the sleeve where Nancy had caught a loose seam before it opened. Leah had brought it to her while Nancy was working the register, then stayed to fold a cartload of towels without being asked. They had eaten sandwiches behind the counter, arguing mildly about a customer who put everything on hot. Nancy remembered the ease of that afternoon: her daughter reaching past her for the mustard, both of them shifting without looking so the other could get through. She took the shirts down carefully and laid them across the top of the bag.
Paul took the folded crib down while she filled a bag from the dresser. She had bought most of Ben’s sleepers at a consignment shop outside town, holding them up by their little shoulders and testing the snaps. Here was a whole drawer of decisions she had made lovingly. She packed the ones on Leah’s list and left the rest.
In the kitchen drawer, the alarm lay beneath the instruction booklet for the new washer. A sticky note was attached to it in Leah’s handwriting: Please replace before cold weather.
Nancy had not forgotten the note. She had moved it once, when she needed the stapler, then again when she put the washer receipt away. Each time, she had thought she would deal with it after the next thing that needed doing.
She put the device and its note in a separate bag. At the front door, Paul looked at what she was carrying and said nothing. He took the larger laundry sack from her instead.
Ben was discharged Wednesday after his doctors were satisfied with his progress and had arranged follow-up. Nancy came to the hospital with Paul, thinking she might carry a bag, but Leah had asked a coworker to drive her to the motel. The coworker’s car seat was already installed. Nancy had not been asked to check it.
They met outside under the covered entrance. Ben was awake, his mouth working against the edge of a clean cloth. Nancy wanted to kiss the little crease behind his ear, but Leah was fastening his jacket and she waited.
“I found the alarm,” Nancy said.
Leah stopped moving.
“The one you bought. I set it aside when it was chirping. I meant to get another.”
“I asked you about that.”
“I know.”
“You said it was handled.”
Nancy looked at Paul, who had stepped away to give them room. She could have explained the broken washer, the late supplier bill, the way a business kept handing you emergencies wearing different clothes. Leah knew all of those things. She had worked behind the same counter after school.
“I hadn’t replaced it,” Nancy said.
Leah pulled the jacket’s zipper up, then down a little where it caught Ben’s chin. She did not speak until it lay properly.
“I told you he seemed better when we spent the day out.”
“We don’t know if that was the same—”
“I’m not asking you to diagnose it now.” Leah’s voice was low. “I’m telling you I was worried, and you kept telling me I worried too much.”
Nancy’s eyes filled. She turned her face slightly so Ben would not see, though he was occupied with the cloth.
“I thought I was helping you calm down.”
Leah adjusted the bag on her shoulder. “You helped me stop calling.”
Her coworker brought the car around. Nancy handed over the green medical folder, which she had checked three times to make sure nothing was missing. Leah thanked her for bringing it. The politeness was exact and unfamiliar.
After the car left, Nancy stood under the canopy until Paul touched her sleeve. She had expected to be accused of failing to fix the alarm. She had not been prepared for her daughter to describe learning, little by little, not to ask.
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