his Florida Trends bag and drove to her house.
Mrs McCall opened it, grinning as though something – life? – had just delivered a present, gift-wrapped, and she could hardly wait to get it inside and rip the ribbons off. She went all actress on him, trilling, ‘Daniel, how nice!’
‘It’s Dan.’
‘Come in, come in!’ Was she playing to a full house or an empty one? He wasn’t sure. He never saw the husband yesterday, just heard him stomping out. The lady was carefully put together for a Saturday, good hair and full makeup, yellow shoes. Was she expecting him, or did she always fix herself up like Barbie, just in case? ‘Come on, you could get heat prostration out there!’
‘Ma’am, if you’re busy . . .’
‘Who me? You’ve got to be kidding. Please.’ She moved him along to the Florida room a little too fast. Still, it was nice to be welcome somewhere.
The Florida room was a little creepy. Where Lucy loved the light, Mrs McCall had layers of fabric covering all the glass. All Florida might be blooming outside but Nenna McCall kept this place hermetically sealed against the heat. The flowers were fake irises embellished with silk leaves so finely made that he could see the veins. Rose patterns crawled across the squashy chairs flanking the sofa and ivy crept up the legs of the wrought iron table and chairs. Underfoot, beige roses bloomed on the Chinese rug. On the walls, he saw gaudy hibiscus prints and watercolors of the Fort Jude scenes framed in bamboo. Having shut out nature, the intelligence that chose this room had tried and failed to replicate it inside.
It made him reluctant to sit down.
She reached as if for his arm but at the last minute bent and patted the sofa. ‘Sit here. I’ll get us some iced tea. Unless you’d prefer lemonade,’ she went on in that nervous, girlish way. ‘Or coffee. Peet’s, from California? It’s really good.’
‘Thanks, I’m pretty much caffeined out.’
‘Oh,’ Nenna looked at the shopping bag like a child jonesing for a present. ‘Is that for me?’
‘Kind of. I wanted to ask you a couple of things.’
‘Sure!’
He proffered The Swordfish. ‘You were in school with my mother?’
Guilty. She jerked away. ‘When?’
‘At FJHS?’ He sat down so she would sit. Then he opened the book. He couldn’t say what, exactly, happened to her face when he pointed out plump little GENEVIEVE HENDERSON. ‘You knew my mother, right?’
She jumped up, as if to prove it wasn’t true.
‘So, did you?’
Her tone chilled. ‘Wait here.’
What pissed her off? Waiting, he leafed through the yearbook, wondering what just went wrong. It was sweet in a way, seeing these long-ago kids’ faces, because they were so young. Flashing on Lucy in her last hour, he saw the future; smart or stupid, pretty or not, these people were hostages to biology and destiny. Nothing that the eighteen-year-olds facing the camera with such hopes could say or do or buy or get would prepare them, or help them arm themselves against what was to come. Today Nenna wore white jeans and a tank top that exposed her tanned, buff upper arms. Her hair was almost perfect, but her face betrayed her; she worked too hard on it.
Right. Now he gets it. She’s pissed at me for knowing how old she is.
By the time she comes back, she’s forgiven him. Smiling, she puts down the tray and offers homemade cookies that he doesn’t want. Offended by being nailed as a late-late Seventies person at Fort Jude High in the Middle Ages, she makes him take two before she asks, ‘Who was your mother?’
He shows her the picture.
‘Lucy. Carteret. You kept her name.’
‘It’s the only name I have.’
Her head snaps back as if everything inside it just jerked to a stop. ‘I’m sorry!’
He flushes. ‘It’s no big.’
Recovering, Mrs McCall – sorry, Nenna – bends over the book with him, dropping details like breadcrumbs along a forest path. ‘Lovely girl but she kept to herself, which is why . . . OK,’ she says in that youthful tone aging women work to maintain, ‘OK. We thought she was snotty.’
‘She was shy.’
‘It’s not like we didn’t like her.’ Defensively, she adds, ‘She didn’t want to be friends. I’m sorry, we should have tried harder.’
‘Don’t feel bad.’
‘Maybe living with your grandmother makes you weird. Her mother died having her and the old lady flew to Charleston and scooped her up.’
‘Charleston?’
‘Carteret’s an old Charleston name. She said David wasn’t fit to bring up a