Rag and Bone Read Online Free PDF Page B

garden, you told me I might see her again. It must have been a premonition. I’ve got to pack. I feel terrible leaving you on your second day home from the hospital.”
    “Don’t worry about that,” I said.
    I slipped my bathrobe on and followed her into her bedroom, where she began packing in a distracted manner, as if her mind was coursing along a half-dozen tracks.
    “It’s odd,” she said, carefully folding a slip. “My two regrets in life were that we weren’t close and that I had lost my daughter. Now suddenly you’re both back in my life.” She tossed the slip into her suitcase, undoing the folds. “In each case a crisis brought us together.” She threw some blouses on the bed. “I’ve always believed good can come out of suffering. This proves it, doesn’t it?”
    “I know I’m grateful for you,” I said. “I’m sure she will be, too.”
    I hoped she would not detect the skepticism beneath my minimal response, but the notion of a stranger showing up in the middle of the night with a hard-luck story, claiming to be family, awoke my professional instincts, which naturally suspected the worst. Had Vicky turned up on my doorstep, I’d have a lot of questions before I embraced her into the warm bosom of the family. I hoped that once her excitement wore off, the same questions would occur to Elena.
    “Her last name is Trujillo,” Elena said, cramming the last of her clothes into her suitcase. “Her little boy’s name is Angel. Angelito.” She gave his name the Spanish pronunciation: Ahn-hel-ito. “Joanne said he looks like he’s nine or ten. I’m a grandmother, Henry. Can you imagine?”
    “How did she get Trujillo as a last name?”
    “It must be her husband’s name.” She took a step back from the bed and her suitcase popped open. “Damn!”
    She sat on the bed and began to weep. I sat down beside her and put my arm around her. “What is it, Elena?”
    “I’ve prayed for the day when I would see my daughter and now I—I’m afraid.”
    Gently, I asked, “Afraid of what?”
    “The girl I saw fifteen years ago in that group home didn’t have much of a future ahead of her,” she replied. “I might have made a difference then, but I was a coward. She must be almost thirty now. God knows how she turned out. It’s not a good sign that she’s running away from an abusive husband. Maybe her coming isn’t a blessing, Henry. Maybe it’s a reproach.”
    Although she had articulated some of my own doubts, my fueling them would only make the reunion harder. “Whatever trouble she’s in, we’ll deal with it together.”
    “You? You shouldn’t even be out of bed,” she said, wiping her eyes, but I could tell she was reassured.
    “Let’s start with the packing,” I said, and together we repacked her suitcase so that everything fit.
    I woke in the middle of the night and realized that, for the first time since I’d had the heart attack, I was completely alone. My stomach began to churn anxiety while my head went spinning on what ifs. What if I had another attack and couldn’t reach the phone? What if the paramedics couldn’t find the house? What if I died this time and didn’t come back? I lay there with my finger pressed to my pulse. After a minute, I wondered whether I was really prepared to spend the rest of my life obsessively monitoring my pulse and worrying if the next heart beat would be the last. Hayward was right: Everyone died of something and I would probably die of heart disease. Fretting about when would not delay the moment. I relaxed, took a deep breath, and closed my eyes. I did not fall asleep immediately, but when I finally did, I didn’t wake again until it was light.
    That afternoon I was sitting on a chaise-longue on the deck with my shirt off, taking in the sun and nodding off over a volume of Supreme Court advance sheets, when I heard a woman exclaim, “Henry!”
    I opened my eyes and turned my head. Inez Montoya was poised above the back of the chaise,