with the streetlights. There are probably different flowerbeds in the warm months, but now the yards of Meadowbrook Estates are covered in crusty scarves of old snow. Holly could tell Jerome that her mother likes the sameness, it makes her feel safe (Charlotte Gibney has her own issues), but doesn’t. She’s gearing up for what promises to be a stressful lunch and an even more stressful afternoon. Moving day, she thinks. Oh God.
She pulls into the driveway of 42 Lily Court, kills the engine, and turns to Jerome. “You need to be prepared. Mother says he’s gotten a lot worse in the last few weeks. Sometimes she exaggerates, but I don’t think she is this time.”
“I understand the situation.” He gives one of her hands a brief squeeze. “I’ll be fine. You just take care of yourself, okay?”
Before she can reply, the door of Number 42 opens and Charlotte Gibney comes out, still in her good church clothes. Holly raises one hand in a tentative hello gesture, which Charlotte doesn’t return.
“Come inside,” she says. “You’re late.”
Holly knows she’s late. By five minutes.
As they approach the door, Charlotte gives Jerome a what’s-he-doing-here look.
“You know Jerome,” Holly says. It’s true; they’ve met half a dozen times, and Charlotte always favors him with that same look. “He came to keep me company, and lend moral support.”
Jerome gives Charlotte his most charming smile. “Hello, Mrs. Gibney. I invited myself along. Hope you don’t mind.”
To this Charlotte simply says, “Come in, I’m freezing out here.” As though it had been their idea for her to come out on the stoop rather than her own.
Number 42, where Charlotte has lived with her brother since her husband died, is overheated and smelling so strongly of potpourri that Holly hopes she won’t begin coughing. Or gagging, which would be even worse. There are four side tables in the little hall, narrowing the passage to the living room enough to make the trip perilous, especially since each table is crammed with the little china figurines that are Charlotte’s passion: elves, gnomes, trolls, angels, clowns, bunnies, ballerinas, doggies, kitties, snowmen, Jack and Jill (with a bucket each), and the pièce de la résistance, a Pillsbury Doughboy.
“Lunch is on the table,” Charlotte says. “Just fruit cup and cold chicken, I’m afraid—but there’s cake for dessert—and . . . and . . .”
Her eyes fill with tears, and when Holly sees them, she feels—in spite of all the work she’s done in therapy—a surge of resentment that’s close to hate. Maybe it is hate. She thinks of all the times she cried in her mother’s presence and was told to go to her room “until you get that out of your system.” She feels an urge to throw those very words in her mother’s face now, but gives Charlotte an awkward hug instead. As she does, she feels how close the bones lie under that thin and flabby flesh, and realizes her mother is old. How can she dislike an old woman who so obviously needs her help? The answer seems to be quite easily.
After a moment Charlotte pushes Holly away with a little grimace, as though she smelled something bad. “Go see your uncle and tell him lunch is ready. You know where he is.”
Indeed Holly does. From the living room comes the sound of professionally excited announcers doing a football pregame show. She and Jerome go single-file, so as not to risk upsetting any members of the china gallery.
“How many of these does she have?” Jerome murmurs.
Holly shakes her head. “I don’t know. She always liked them, but it’s gotten out of hand since my father died.” Then, lifting her voice and making it artificially bright: “Hi, Uncle Henry! All ready for lunch?”
Uncle Henry clearly didn’t make the run to church. He’s slumped in his La-Z-Boy, wearing a Purdue sweatshirt with some of his breakfast egg on it, and a pair of jeans, the kind with the elasticized waist. They are riding low, showing a pair of boxer shorts with tiny blue pennants on them. He looks from the TV to his visitors. For a moment he’s totally blank, then he smiles. “Janey! What are you doing here?”
That goes through Holly like a glass dagger, and her mind flashes momentarily to Chet Ondowsky, with his scratched hands and torn suit coat pocket. And why would it not? Janey was her cousin, bright and vivacious, all the things Holly could never be, and she was Bill Hodges’s girlfriend for awhile, before