Mama was awake when we got home from church, acting like her regular old self and slicing up bread for lunchtime sandwiches. Mylie ran right up to her and wrapped her arms around Mama’s legs, whimpering like she might start crying again.
“Hush, honey,” said Mama. “I’ll pick you up just as soon as I’m done here. Della, you want to find some play clothes for Mylie to wear? I don’t want her eating lunch in her nice Sunday dress.”
I watched Mama real close, not moving. She looked pretty, in a pair of shorts and a tank top, with her straw-colored hair pulled up into a ponytail. She was done slicing bread now and was working on the mayo, spreading it fast over all the pieces she’d cut and then slapping ham on top of it. She seemed perfectly, perfectly normal.
Mama looked up and caught me watching. “Didn’t you hear what I said, Della? Go find some play clothes for Mylie to wear—quick now, because I’m almost done with these sandwiches!”
The phone rang just as we were all finishing up our lunch, and Daddy got it. “Hi there, Mama. Hi, Daddy,” he said, and tucked the phone between his shoulder and his neck and started washing up our sandwich plates while he talked. Grandma and Grandpa Kelly called most Sunday afternoons; they’d lived with us for nearly my whole entire life, until Grandpa had a stroke last fall and his doctor told him he had to stop farming and move closer to the hospital. Grandpa cussed up a blue streak, but Grandma put her foot down, and they moved into a house in Alberta only a few weeks later.
I missed having them around, but I liked it, too, since it meant that Mylie and I got to move into a real true bedroom for the first time ever. When Grandma and Grandpa lived with us, Mylie had slept in with Mama and Daddy, and I had a tiny little bed in an old storage room Daddy had painted pink when I turned two.
I handed Daddy my plate and started putting away the lemonade pitcher and the sandwich fixings. Mama had got up from the table already and taken Mylie in for a nap, but I didn’t think it was working, since all I could hear from my bedroom was hollering and banging, like Mylie was kicking the crib the way she did when she didn’t want to go to sleep.
“Mm-hmm,” Daddy said into the phone handset. I could hear Grandma’s voice through it, tinny and garbled like it was coming from a million miles away, even though Alberta was just a little more than an hour in the truck. “Yep, that sounds real nice.” Daddy closed the dishwasher and wiped his wet hands off on a towel. “Glad they’re taking good care of you, Mama. What’s that?” Now the voice spilling out of the receiver was Grandpa’s deep and husky one. Grandpa’s voice sounded like his skin looked—suntanned and weathered, a little dry and a little crackly.
Daddy’s lips pulled tight into a line. I kept sneaking looks at him out of the corner of my eye as I cleaned the table with a wet rag, curiosity boiling up my throat like water. “The farm’s fine. Nope, everything’s just fine, Dad. Yeah, the drought’s pretty bad, but it’s not hurting the crops too much. Costing us a bit more in water, but we’ll be okay. Yeah, Suzie’s great. No problems at all.”
I stopped bothering to hide my eavesdropping and stared at Daddy. No problems at all?
“Here, Della,” Daddy said, turning and reaching the phone out toward me. “Give me that rag and take this. Grandma has something she wants to tell you.”
I took the handset from him and put it to my ear. “Della honey,” said Grandma through the phone, “I found a recipe yesterday that made me think of you.” Grandma’s words were always like slow, sweet syrup, and no matter what she was saying, listening to her always made me feel better. Grandma grew up in Georgia before she married Grandpa, and you could still hear that Georgia sun in every word she said. “Watermelon limeade. Bet you’d like that, wouldn’t you, sweetheart? Soon as I saw it, I said to your granddaddy, ‘I gotta send that to our little watermelon girl.’ I’m gonna email it to you this afternoon, before I forget.”
“Sounds delicious. Love you, Grandma.”
“Love you, too, Della. Tell your mama and Mylie hi for us. Bye, shug.”
I put the phone back on its cradle just as my bedroom door opened and Mama came out. Mylie was quiet now, so I guessed she must have gone to sleep, after all. I opened my mouth to tell Mama about Grandma’s recipe, but the words died before they made it up to my tongue.
Mama wasn’t looking at me—wasn’t looking at anything. Still, her head was nodding over and over again, just like mine had when Grandma was telling me about the watermelon limeade. Just like Mama was having a conversation with somebody the rest of us couldn’t see at all.