with Jeremy. To help him through it. She knew it was true. So, that decided it. She rose from the chair to finish her meager packing. She would go. At least for the moment, she would leave it to the searchers, and go.
Shelby and Rob were booked on the same flights home, first a small plane to Miami, and then a later flight back to Philadelphia. They were not seated near one another, but Rob waited dutifully for her after the first leg of the flight, and they sat in silence together in an airport bar in Miami.
‘Did you talk to Jeremy?’ Shelby finally asked him as she clinked the ice cubes in her limeade. ‘Does he know yet?’
Rob shook his head. ‘No. Not yet. I honestly don’t know how I’m going to break it to him.’
Shelby nodded. She glanced over at her son-in-law resting his head in his hands. She thought about all the cruel accusations she had leveled at him. It was true that he had been more passive in the face of this disaster than she would have wished. But looking at him now, it was clear what a toll the loss of Chloe was taking. His skin was ashen and his eyes were red-rimmed and sunken. He seemed to have aged about twenty years in the last week. She had been thinking about something that she hesitated to say. Finally, she decided to just blurt it out. ‘You know, Rob,’ she said, ‘I’ve been thinking. This is all going to be so hard on Jeremy . . .’
Rob nodded and spoke absently. ‘No kidding.’
‘The last thing I want to do is to make things more difficult. But I was just wondering,’ said Shelby, ‘if it might be best for Jeremy, if I stayed with you. Just for a little while. Just till he gets used to the idea that his mother is . . . isn’t coming back.’
Rob looked at her warily ‘You mean . . . at our house?’ he said.
‘Just for a few days. Of course, I realize that I may not be welcome with Chloe gone.’
‘No, it’s not that,’ he said.
‘What?’ she asked.
‘Nothing. It’s just that I know you’re busy. I mean, Chloe was telling me about your new boss and all. She said you were worried about it.’
Shelby thought about her job. The man who had hired her, groomed her, and repeatedly promoted her, Albert Markson, had died suddenly last month. His nephew, Elliott, a younger, less approachable man, had taken over, and made it clear that every employee and every position was going to be reevaluated. ‘I feel like none of it matters any more,’ she said.
‘I know what you mean,’ Rob agreed. Then, he sighed. ‘But you don’t want to lose your job.’
‘The job can wait. Of course, if you think I would be in your way,’ Shelby said, feeling the awkwardness between them.
Rob avoided her gaze and said nothing to contradict her. A voice on the loudspeaker was making a preliminary boarding call for their flight to Philly. ‘That’s us,’ said Rob, standing up.
Shelby stood up and pulled out the handle of her bag. She had not expected wild enthusiasm for her idea, but did feel as if he could have at least been polite about it.
‘All right,’ he said.
Shelby looked at him uncertainly. ‘All right I should stay?’
Rob shrugged. ‘For Jeremy,’ he said.
‘I think it’s what Chloe would want me to do,’ she said.
Rob did not reply. He rolled his bag out around her chair, and, avoiding her gaze, headed for the door.
EIGHT
They barely spoke on the drive back from the airport. When they arrived at the house, all the parking spots along the curb were taken. Rob pulled his pick-up truck beside a parked car and held his foot on the brake. ‘You can get out,’ he said. ‘I may have to park up the block.’
Shelby gazed at her daughter’s home. Winter pansies bloomed in Chloe’s carefully tended windowboxes. It was only a week ago, Shelby thought, that she had pulled up and seen her daughter waiting for her in front of that gray stone row home. It seemed like an eternity. ‘I’m dreading going in,’ she said.
Exhaustion and impatience were written all over Rob’s face. ‘You can wait outside if you want,’ he said.
‘No, I only meant . . . Never mind. I’ll go in. I have my key.’ Slowly, painfully, as if all her joints were frozen, Shelby forced herself to get out of the