when we get home.” I don’t know if Grandmother knew that her husband and her brother were lovers, but it is the kind of discovery that could send a woman into the arms of her first cousin. It would explain why we know so little about Louis.
“I don’t remember my daddy.”
I don’t believe Mom knows anything, because there are two things that Mom has never been able to keep: a husband and a secret. I’m sure Louis and Jed’s relationship isn’t the only skeleton in the two-hundred-year-old Sutton closet. Not that it really matters, but it is extremely unfair that Grandmother is buried in the sinners’ corner while Jed has a tomb with the rest of the family.
“I think you’re really going to like hearing your dad’s letters.”
As it turns out, she finds them as boring as I did.
“He was a war hero, all right.” Mom does like Grandmother’s, but for the most part, she shows more interest in folding the tiny onesies we bought for Frankie, and I leave the letter to Jed in its envelope. It’s best that she thinks of her father only as a war hero.
“What’s this one say?” Mom asks, and holds up a tiny shirt with a blue llama on it.
I look up from the stack of letters I’m tying back up with the old blue ribbon.
“ ‘Ain’t No Llama Like the One I Got.’ ”
We’ve enclosed ourselves in my office with most of the baby shower gifts. The stroller is still in the back of the Escalade because it’s too big to get in the house without Lindsey seeing.
Mom holds up a onesie with a Star Wars stormtrooper. “ ‘Storm Pooper.’ ”
Mom claps her hands together and laughs, and it isn’t until I start to wrap them in Little Peanut paper that I realize just how many poop-themed shirts Mom picked out.
“That one?”
“ ‘Party Pooper.’ ” She laughs harder and points at another. “ ‘Poops I Did It Again.’ ”
I can see the party now: Mom laughing about pooper onesies, and Lindsey and I laughing at Mom laughing about pooper onesies. Even though it’s just going to be the three of us, I think we’ll have a good time.
But later, when Mom and I are watching The Price Is Right, Lindsey announces, “Jim’s coming to the baby shower. I hope you don’t mind.”
“That’s fine. We had to buy twelve table settings,” I tell her as I braid Mom’s hair.
She hands Mom a sleeping pill and a glass of water. “He might bring his sister.” Mom puts it in her mouth and takes a drink. I watch her swallow as I put an elastic at the end.
Lindsey leaves the room, and Mom lowers the volume on the television. “Go get Momma’s letters,” she says as she wipes cheese dust from her chest.
I hesitate. Did she fake swallow? Is she trying to get rid of me so she can check on her other pills?
“Daddy’s too. I want to hear them again.”
I toss the brush on the bedside chest and walk from her room, pausing just outside the door. My heart picks up a few beats as I wait for the drawer to open and an angry outburst to commence. I give it a good minute, and when nothing happens, I rush to grab the bundle of letters from my desk. Back in her room, we make ourselves cozy against Mom’s pillows, and I read her the “good parts” of Grandmother’s letters that mention her.
“Read the part where Daddy says he misses me.”
“ ‘I miss my girls and wish I was there to kiss Patricia good night.’ ”
Mom stares up at the faded gold canopy. Her braid is to one side, and her arms are across her chest. She’s so still that if her eyes weren’t open and blinking, I might think she’d fallen asleep.
“Good night, Mom.” I kiss her cheek and scoot to the side of the bed.
“Daddy was a war hero.”
I stop and look across my shoulder at Mom.
“I wish his letters weren’t about the war so much and were more about missing me and Momma.”
“Some people just have a problem expressing emotion. Not all men are like Earl with his cactus card,” I say, because I’d much rather she talk about Earl than feel sad about Louis’s stilted letters.
“He never said he loves us. I would have liked to hear that.”
I hate to see my mom sad. “I found another letter from Grandfather that I haven’t read yet.” I return to sit beside her and pull the letter from the last envelope.