The Bird House A Novel - By Kelly Simmons Page 0,39
me seventy-five thousand dollars. The rest went to his new wife.”
“Isn’t that a lot of money, though?”
I sighed. “It covered your father’s schooling.”
She nodded.
“Don’t you start taking his side now, little one, just because he made me a bird house once.”
“I didn’t say anything, Grandma.”
“All right then. It’s my mother’s birthday, remember. We must take her side.”
There was no pity in her eyes. Was college all a person should expect from a parent? I remember my college graduation, how I surveyed the crowd like a Secret Service agent, scanning the faces for his. Not wanting to see him, not wanting to miss him. And later, how he waited until my mother and Aunt Caro had gone. I can still picture the outline of his sheepish frame as he lumbered up to me and my friends. The way he shook their hands solemnly as their wide eyes questioned me over his shoulder, wondering why I’d never mentioned that I’d even had a father. I’d pretended, as I recall, that he was dead.
“Annie,” he said. “I know you don’t understand this, not yet, but I did what I had to do. What was fair to do.”
“Fair, Dad? Are you crazy?”
“I made sure you got to college, at least, even after I—”
“Even after what, Daddy? After you decided to hate me because I had the bad luck of looking like her?”
“It’s complicated, Ann-o,” he said softly.
The ring box remained in Ellie’s curled palm. “Hey, are you okay, Grandma?”
I waved my memories out of the air like a bad odor. “Of course I am.”
“It’s a sad story. You must have missed your daddy after he left.”
I swallowed hard. “Well, I was older, it wasn’t as if I were truly a child anymore.”
“But you only have one father,” she said.
“Yes,” I said softly. “Well, would you like to try the ring on?”
“Oh yes!” She twirled it on her index finger. “My mommy hides things from Daddy, too.”
I swallowed hard before I dared to answer.
“Really?” I smoothed the fabric in the trunk, trying to be nonchalant.
She nodded. “When she buys shoes she always says, ‘Don’t tell Daddy.’”
“Oh,” I said quietly. Did the disappointment seep into my voice?
She twirled the ring on her hand. “This looks just like the one in the photo.”
“What’s that?”
Ellie was silent, reverential, as she looked at the ring with her head cocked.
“There was a ring like this in one of the photos.”
“Oh, I doubt it, dear. My aunt said my mother never wore it.”
“No, I think she did. My mom showed it to me.”
“Tinsley? When on earth—”
“When I took home the albums that day, Daddy said, ‘That’s my grandma,’ and my mom said it was a really pretty ring and wondered whether you had it.”
“I see,” I sniffed. Trolling for jewelry before I was even sick, let alone dead? Tinsley had to be more careful now—I had a spy!
“Well, sometime when we don’t have luncheon plans, perhaps we can find the photo.”
She nodded and followed me to the stairs. “What’s in those?” she asked innocently, pointing to the two green trunks in the corner.
“Oh, nothing. Baby things,” I said dismissively, with a wave of my hand. I couldn’t bear to glance at them, but she did, lingering in front of them after I was already on the stairs. I reached back for her hand to tug her along and she let me hold it for a few moments before she pulled away.
Downstairs I poured us each a glass of cola and I raised mine to hers.
“Well, to my dear mother on her birthday,” I said.
“To my great-grandmother,” she replied, and the sound of that phrase nearly broke my heart.
My plan was to walk into Bryn Mawr Village, since it was sunny outside, and quite pleasant for the end of March. We weren’t even two blocks into the walk before Ellie fell behind my brisk pace.
“Grandma, if I get tired, will you give me a piggyback ride?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Oh.”
“If you get tired, we’ll lie down in the hedges and nap with the hedgehogs!” I said and she giggled so loud it was a squeal. It hung in the air like a bell, like something you could see.
I crossed the street, and she followed me, skipping. We followed Barrett Lane until it turned onto the curving walkway that looped around the college. On clear days like this one, the path pulsed with students and the buzz of music coming from their earphones. Some walked, but most jogged, alone or in packs of ten or twenty