Offense.
As if I had broken some agreement I didn’t know existed.
“She’s my granddaughter.”
“You’ve known she existed for four weeks.”
“That doesn’t change what she is.”
I almost laughed.
Then Mom looked past my shoulder toward the brass nameplates Silas had installed beside the blue front door.
SILAS CALLAHAN.
COLLEEN CALLAHAN.
Her lips tightened.
There it was.
Fifteen years vanished instantly.
I was nineteen again, standing in my parents’ foyer as rain hammered the windows.
My father’s face had been purple with rage.
“No daughter of mine marries trash.”
Silas was twenty-one then.
He drove an old pickup with one working headlight. His father rented half a duplex. They shopped at discount stores and fixed things instead of replacing them.
Apparently, in my father’s world, poverty was contagious.
“You want to be a Callahan?” Dad had shouted.]
Then he opened the front door.
“Go be one.”
Mom had stood halfway up the stairs in her robe.
Watching.
Silent.
My suitcase landed on the lawn.
So did a box of nursing-school textbooks.
By the time I picked them up, rain had soaked through the cardboard.
I waited.
I actually waited for my mother to come outside.
