No getting it off.
As he went over to a door marked PRIVATE, he found himself retucking his shirt, pulling up his slacks, smoothing his hair. Now he wished he’d taken time to shower, shave, change.
And he really wished that meeting with Lizzie had gone better. Like he needed another thing on his mind?
His knock was quiet, respectful. The response he got was not:
“What are you knocking for,” barked the Southern female voice.
Lane frowned as he pushed open the door. And then he stopped dead.
Miss Aurora was at her stove, the hot-oil smell and snare-drum crackle of chicken frying in a pan rising into the air in front of her, her weave done in a short bob of super-tight black curls, her housecoat the same one he’d seen her in when he’d left to go up north.
All he could do was blink, and wonder whether someone had played a sick joke on him.
“Well, don’t just stand there,” she snapped at him. “Wash y’all hands and get out the trays. I’m five minutes out.”
Right, he’d expected to find her laying in bed with a sheet up to her chest and a fading light in her eyes as her beloved Jesus came for her.
“Lane, snap out of it. I’m not dead yet.”
He rubbed the bridge of his nose as a wave of exhaustion sandbagged him. “Yes, ma’am.”
As he closed them in together, he searched for signs of physical weakness in those strong shoulders and those set legs of hers. There was none. There was absolutely nothing about the sixty-five-year-old woman to suggest that she had ended up in the emergency room that morning.
Okay, so it was a toss-up, he decided as he eyeballed the rest of the food she’d prepared for him. A toss-up between him being relieved … and him feeling furious that he’d wasted the time coming down here.
One thing he was clear on? There was no leaving before he ate—partially because she would hog tie him to a chair and force feed him if she had to, but mostly because the instant he caught that scent, his stomach had gone hollow-pit hungry on him.
“Are you okay?” he had to ask.
The glare she sent him suggested if he wanted to continue that line of questioning, she’d be more than happy to spank him until he shut his piehole.
Roger that, ma’am, he thought.
Crossing the shallow space, he found that the TV trays the two of them had always eaten off of were exactly where he’d seen them last—over in the corner, propped up between the entertainment console and the bookcase that was set at an angle. The pair of Barcaloungers were the same, too, each one in front of a tall window, crocheted doilies draped over the tops where the backs of heads went.
Pictures of children were everywhere and in all kinds of frames, and amid the beautiful, dark faces, there were pale ones, too: There was him at his kindergarten graduation; his brother Max scoring a goal in lacrosse; his sister, Gin, dressed up as a milk maid in a school play; his other brother, Edward, in a tie and jacket for his senior picture at U.Va.
“Good Lord, you are too thin, boy,” Miss Aurora muttered as she went to stir a pot that he knew was filled with green beans cooked with cubes of ham. “Don’t they have food up there in New York?”
“Not like this, ma’am.”
The sound she made in the back of her throat was like a Chevy backfiring. “Get the plates.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
He discovered his hands were shaking as he took two out of the cupboard and they rattled together. Unlike the woman who had birthed him, who was no doubt upstairs “resting” in a medicated haze of I’m-not-an-addict-because-my-doctor-gave-me-the-pills, Miss Aurora had always seemed both ageless and strong as a superhero. The idea that the cancer was back?
Hell, he couldn’t fathom her having had it in the first place. But he wasn’t fooling himself. That had to be the reason for the collapse.
After he’d gotten the silver and napkins on the trays and poured them both a sweet tea, he went over and sat on the chair on the right.
“You shouldn’t be cooking,” he said as she started to plate up.
“And you should’na been gone so long. What’s wrong with you.”
Definitely not on her deathbed, he thought.
“What did the doctor say?” he asked.
“Nothing worth hearing in my opinion.” She brought over all kinds of heaped-to-Heaven. “Now be quiet and eat.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Oh, sweet Jesus, he thought as he stared down at his plate. Fried okra. Chitterlings. Potato cakes. Beans in that pork boil. And the fried chicken.