Red said, “Carla would, though. On account of Susan. You should have asked for Carla’s number.”
“Oh, what’s the point?” Abby said. “We know he was nowhere near the towers. Isn’t that enough? And I’m not willing to bet that even Carla has his number, if you want the honest truth.”
Then she started loading the dishwasher, while Red stood gaping at her.
So: New Jersey. Another broken relationship. Two broken relationships, unless Denny had stayed in touch with Susan. Red said of course he had stayed in touch; wasn’t he the most hands-on father they knew of? Abby said that didn’t necessarily follow. Maybe Susan had been just another passing fancy, she said, like that half-baked software project of his.
This was not characteristic of Abby. She believed devoutly in people’s capacity for change, sometimes to the exasperation of everyone else in the family. But now she seemed to have given up. When she phoned Jeannie and Amanda with the news, she spoke in a toneless, emotionless voice, and she told Red he could just let Stem know when he saw him at work. “I’ll get right on it,” Red said, falsely hearty. “He’ll be relieved.”
“I don’t know why,” Abby said. “There was never any real danger.”
The following morning, a Saturday, Amanda stopped by unannounced. Amanda was a lawyer, their hardest-nosed, most competent, most take-charge child. “Where’s the number for this Lena person?” she asked.
Abby pulled it off the fridge door and handed it to her. (Of course she’d kept it.) Amanda sat down at the kitchen table and reached for the phone and dialed.
“Hello, Lena?” she said. “Amanda calling. Denny’s sister. May I have Carla’s phone number, please?”
The burble at the other end must have been some kind of protest, because Amanda said, “I have no intention of upsetting her, believe me. I just need to get in touch with my rascal of a brother.”
That seemed to do the trick; she dipped her free hand in her purse and pulled out a memo pad with a tiny gold pen attached. “Yes,” she said, and she wrote down a number. “Thank you very much. Goodbye.”
She dialed again. “Busy,” she told her parents. Abby groaned, but Amanda said, “Naturally it’s busy; her mother’s calling her with a heads-up.” She drummed her fingers on the table a moment. Then she dialed once more. “Hi, Carla,” she said. “It’s Amanda. How’ve you been?”
Carla’s answer didn’t take much time, but even so, Amanda seemed impatient. “Good,” she said. “Well, could I have my brother’s number? I’m going to give him a piece of my mind.”
While she wrote it down, Red and Abby hunched forward and stared at the pad, hardly breathing. “Thanks,” Amanda said. “Bye.” And she hung up.
Abby was already reaching for the pad, but Amanda pulled it away from her and said, “I am making this call.” She dialed once more.
“Denny,” she said, “it’s Amanda.”