Her plain country face was grim with outrage.

“She never shut up. One question about how her daughter was feeling, then it was the poor Claytons this and the poor Claytons that. Your Miss Dunhill held her tongue until her mother said what a shame it was that they’d have to change churches again. Then the girl lost her temper and started shouting at them to get out.”

“Good for her,” I said.

“I heard her yell, ‘Do you want to see what your good friends’ son did to me?’ and honey-pie, that’s when I started running. She was trying to pull off the bandages. And the mother . . . she was leaning forward, Mr. Amberson. Eager. She actually wanted to look. I hustled them out and got one of the residents to give Miss Dunhill a shot and quiet her down. The father—a little mouse of a man—tried to apologize for his wife. ‘She didn’t know she was upsetting Sadie,’ he says. ‘Well,’ I says back, ‘what about you? Cat get your tongue?’ And do you know what the woman said, just before they got on the elevator?”

I shook my head.

“She said, ‘I can’t blame him, how can I? He used to play in our yard, and he was just the sweetest boy.’ Can you believe that?”

I could. Because I thought I had already met Mrs. Dunhill, in a manner of speaking. On West Seventh Street, chasing after her older son and yelling at the top of her lungs. Stop, Robert, don’t walk so fast, I’m not done with you.

“You may find her . . . overly emotional,” the nurse said. “I just wanted you to know there’s a good reason for it.”

9

She wasn’t overly emotional. I would have preferred that. If there’s such a thing as serene depression, that’s where Sadie’s head was at on that Easter evening. She was sitting in her chair, at least, with an untouched plate of chop suey in front of her. She’d lost weight; her long body seemed to float in the white hospital johnny she pulled around her when she saw me.

She smiled though—on the side of her face that still could—and turned her good cheek to be kissed. “Hello, George—I’d better call you that, don’t you think?”

“Maybe so. How are you, honey?”

“They say I’m better, but my face feels like someone dipped it in kerosene and then set it on fire. It’s because they’re taking me off the pain medication. God forbid I get hooked on dope.”

“If you need more, I can talk to somebody.”

She shook her head. “It makes me fuzzy, and I need to think. Also, it makes it hard to keep control of my emotions. I had quite the shouting match with my mother and father.” There was only the one chair—unless you wanted to count the commode squatting in the corner—so I sat on the bed. “The head nurse filled me in. Based on what she overheard, you had every right to blow your top.”

“Maybe, but what good does it do? Mom will never change. She can talk for hours about how having me almost killed her, but she has very little feeling for anyone else. It’s lack of tact, but it’s lack of something more. There’s a word for it, but I can’t remember it.”

“Empathy?”

“That’s it. And she has a very sharp tongue. Over the years, it’s whittled my dad away to a stub. He rarely says anything these days.”

“You don’t need to see them again.”

“I think I do.” I liked her calm, detached voice less and less. “Mama says they’ll fix up my old room, and I really don’t have anyplace else to go.”

“Your home’s in Jodie. And your work.”

“I think we talked about that. I’m going to tender my resignation.”

“No, Sadie, no. That’s a very bad idea.”

She smiled as best she could. “You sound like Miz Ellie. Who didn’t believe you when you said Johnny was a danger.” She thought about this, then added: “Of course, neither did I. I never stopped being a fool about him, did I?”

“You have a house.”

“That’s true. And mortgage payments I can’t make. I’ll have to let it go.”

“I’ll make the payments.”

That got through. She looked shocked. “You can’t afford to do that!”

“I can, actually.” Which was true . . . for awhile, at least. Plus there was always the Kentucky Derby and Chateaugay. “I’m moving out of Dallas and in with Deke. He’s not charging me rent, which frees up plenty for house payments.”

A tear crept to the edge of her right eye and trembled there. “You’re kind of missing the point. I can’t take care of myself, not yet. And I won’t be ‘taken in,’ unless it’s at home, where Mom will hire a nurse to help with the nasty bits. I’ve got a little pride left. Not much, but a little.”

“I’ll take care of you.”

She stared at me, wide-eyed. “What?”

“You heard me. And when it comes to me, Sadie, you can stick your pride where the sun doesn’t shine. I happen to love you. And if you love me, you’ll stop talking mad shit about going home to your crocodile of a mother.”

She managed a faint smile at that, then sat quiet, thinking, hands in the lap of her flimsy cover-up. “You came to Texas to do something, and it wasn’t to nurse a school librarian who was too silly to know she was in danger.”

“My business in Dallas is on hold.”

“Can it be?”

“Yes.” And as simply as that, it was decided. Lee was going to New Orleans, and I was going back to Jodie. The past kept fighting me, and it was going to win this round. “You need time, Sadie, and I have time. We might as well spend it together.”

“You can’t want me.” She said this in a voice just above a whisper. “Not the way I am now.”

“But I do.”

She looked at me with eyes that were afraid to hope and hoped anyway. “Why would you?”

“Because you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.” The good side of her mouth began to tremble. The tear spilled onto her cheek and was followed by others. “If I didn’t have to go back to Savannah . . . if I didn’t have to live with them . . .

with her . . . maybe then I could be, I don’t know, just a little bit all right.” I took her into my arms. “You’re going to be a lot better than that.”

“Jake?” Her voice was muffled with tears. “Would you do something for me before you go?”

“What, honey?”

“Take away that goddamned chop suey. The smell is making me sick.” 10

The nurse with the fullback shoulders and the watch pinned to her bosom was Rhonda McGinley, and on the eighteenth of April she insisted on pushing Sadie’s wheelchair not only to the elevator but all the way out to the curb, where Deke waited with the passenger door of his station wagon open.