Upstairs, all the bedrooms were unoccupied, beds unmade. I found Auntie Lynn’s room at the end of the hall, and it was just as cluttered and dirty as the others, which came as a surprise because she’d always been a tidy person. She must have been very sick and weak from the chemo, unable to bear all the responsibilities of homemaker in this grim, desolate place.
My heart tightened with regret, and I sat down on the edge of her bed. I shouldn’t have listened when she insisted that everything was fine. I should have come home to check on things, especially because I knew, deep down, that my father and grandmother together were a handful.
I realized I had been in denial about that, willing to stick my head in the sand and be selfish while I pursued my own dreams of a better life. I wanted it for myself, but in my defense, I’d also wanted to make Auntie Lynn proud. And I wanted to make enough money to provide for her. I’d often dreamed of setting her up in her own apartment anywhere she liked. Perhaps near me in New Jersey and eventually Manhattan. If only she hadn’t gotten sick. I never expected to lose her so soon. Before I’d finished what I’d started.
I checked my watch. It was past noon. I needed to call around and find out where they had taken Auntie Lynn so that I could visit her.
Just then, a car pulled into the yard and brought me to my feet. I moved to the window and looked out. My father and grandmother were getting out of Auntie Lynn’s old Toyota Camry. They shut the car doors and stomped up the front porch steps.
By the time they walked in, I was halfway down the stairs. They stopped short at the sight of me.
“Well, look what the cat dragged in,” my father said.
My grandmother scowled at me. It was shocking how much she had aged since the last time I had come to visit. She looked thin and frail, almost skeletal. Her color wasn’t good.
“You’re too late,” my father added. “She’s gone. Died this morning.”
His words shot out of him like a cannonball and shook all the walls in the house. I grabbed onto the staircase banister. “What?”
“You heard me,” he replied.
I felt like I had been sucker punched in the gut. I still couldn’t believe it was true. It couldn’t be. “Why didn’t anyone call me? I would have come. I could have been here.” I stared at them both, waiting for an explanation.
My father ignored the question and lumbered into the kitchen. I descended the rest of the stairs and heard the sound of the fridge opening and a beer cap snapping off a bottle. Then the sound of the metal cap missing the garbage can and landing on the dirty linoleum floor.
I observed all of this in a state of paralysis and numb silence. My grandmother tossed her purse onto the small table in the entry hall and dragged herself into the darkened living room. I followed her in and opened the curtains while she sank onto the upholstered easy chair and lit up a cigarette. She took a deep drag and savored it before she spoke.
“I told him to call you,” she said in a raspy voice, “but you know what he’s like.”
“Don’t talk about me like I’m not here!” my father shouted from the kitchen.
Gram and I ignored him because we both knew better than to talk back.
Feeling weak and sick, I moved to the sofa and sank onto it, bowed my head, and squeezed great clumps of my hair in both hands. “What happened? I thought she was doing okay.”
“She was,” Gram replied. “They said she was in remission, but it was some other infection that did her in. Then she got pneumonia.”
I forced myself to look up while my eyes burned with tears, which I fought with all my might because I couldn’t let myself cry. Not here, in front of my father, in case he walked in. “Did she suffer?”
My grandmother looked away. “She suffered plenty. At least they were generous with the morphine. So even if you had come yesterday, she wouldn’t have known it.”
I rocked back and forth and squeezed my eyes shut in a despairing attempt to manage my grief. I couldn’t let it rise to the surface. Not here. Never here. God, oh God. Why? Inside, my heart was sobbing.
“It’s not natural for a parent to outlive a child,” Gram said. “It ain’t fair. She was so good. The best of all of us.”
I lifted my head and nodded, then heard my father shout, “Well, she’s gone now, ain’t she! So you better get used to it!” He stormed out the back door, and I heard the truck door open and slam shut. The engine roared to life, and he sped out of the yard.
“We won’t see him again till tomorrow,” Gram said. She took another drag of her cigarette. “He’ll be at the bar all night. He’ll probably sleep in a ditch somewhere. Or in the drunk tank.”
I sat back and wiped a hand down my face. “We should call the police and let them know so they can pick him up later before he gets behind the wheel and kills someone.”
I should have said “before he kills someone else,” because he’d already taken my mother from me. It would be a terrible thing if he killed another child’s mother that night.
“What happens now?” I asked Gram. “Will there be a funeral?”
“No. Lynn didn’t want any fuss. She made us promise to spread her ashes in the wind. That’s all.” Gram paused. “I suspect that had something to do with the money they charge for funerals these days. You know how tight things are around here.”
When I didn’t respond, she added, “This is a big house, you know. It takes a lot of upkeep.”
She gave me a pointed, accusing look—as if I were a stranger she loathed. Someone who was not a part of this family because I had dared to leave. I had insulted and denigrated them by wanting a better life.
Her sinister eyes narrowed, and I wondered if she knew that I had been sending monthly checks to Auntie Lynn over the past few years to help with the grocery and medical bills. That’s why I had no extra money left over to reduce my monstrous student debt.
I suspected that if Gram knew about those checks, she’d want me to continue sending them. But I knew that if I sent money now, it would go straight to booze and cigarettes. That’s why Auntie Lynn had kept it secret from them.
I tried to change the subject. “Did she ask for me at all?”
“She was too drugged up.”
“Before that?”
Gram tapped her cigarette on the ashtray and spoke callously. “She wrote you a letter the other day. She asked your father to put it in the mailbox.”
My heart nearly beat out of my chest. “What happened to it? Did he post it? Or is it still here somewhere?”
Reading that letter would give me one final, private moment of connection with her. It would provide me with the closure I would undoubtedly need over the coming months and years.
“He threw it out,” Gram said flatly.
I blinked a few times in disbelief. “He did what?”
“He tossed it.”
I glanced searchingly around the room. “Where? Here?” I stood up to go and rifle through the trash can in the kitchen, but Gram stopped me.
“Don’t waste your time looking for it. He threw it out at the hospital.”
“Why in God’s name would he do that?” I whirled around, my emotions running high.
“He didn’t think it mattered much because you never came to visit. He didn’t think you’d care.”