I sat there in the dark and held her hand, and I didn’t say anything either.
She was in the hospital for a week and a rehab center for five more. I kept going to the house every Thursday. I watered the plants. I dusted the piano. I got the mail and put it on the hall table.
Now I understood what she meant by the house needs someone in it.
I went to see her at the rehab center twice. Once with Willa. Willa brought a new drawing, a floor plan of the rehab center, all the hallways and the dining room and the physical therapy gym. The
nurses loved it. They taped it to the wall at the nurses’ station.
When Mrs. Whitaker came home in April, walking with a cane, Susan stayed with her for a month. Susan was about my age, maybe a little older. She had her mother’s straight back and her father’s
kind face.
On her last day, before she flew home, Susan found me in the kitchen. I was wiping down the counters.
“Carly,” she said. “Can I tell you something?”
“Of course.”
“My mother isn’t a person who says things,” Susan said. “You’ve probably noticed. She was a school principal for twenty-eight years. She ran that school like a navy ship. She loved us, my dad
