“Thank you,” Freddie whispered.
“Anything you need, you say the word,” Darcy said. “I’ll even send those paisley dresses down the river if you want.” She raised her eyebrows.
For a moment, they laughed.
Freddie hasn’t been great about not crying.
She cried in the bathroom once, her hands on the white pedestal sink. She cried in the car when the doctor first told them on October 17 that it was much more serious than they’d initially thought. Greg laughed and said, “Should we swing by the gas station so I can start smoking?” She sobbed and slapped his chest and then felt awful.
Now she sees her daughter lying against the father she loves so much, and Freddie hears in her head a thousand things she could write to chronicle all this. She presses her teeth together. She cannot cry anymore. Even though Greg looks so young and vulnerable with that hat on. What a shame, she thinks for a second. What a goddamned waste. A perfectly good person wasted. She shakes her head. She will not think like this. She will not cry. Even though “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” （Rosemary Clooney） plays, and that song always gets her. Something about the longing in the words, the hope and vulnerability: if the fates allow. She hears everything differently now.
She could almost start writing. She thinks the words could explode out of her everywhere, like steam through a cracked pipe. For her application, she has been touching up some of her old writing—nothing new. She promises herself she will write again if Greg gets better. What if he doesn’t? Will she write anyway?
But she will not cry, not in front of Greg, and certainly not in front of Alex Lionel, who has probably never cried once in his life. Alex who no doubt smiled a stoic businessman’s smile at people on the day of his son’s funeral and told them he appreciated the fact that they came. How did he and Kay bear all of that? How did they assemble themselves back together like this?
The table next to the partition has a man and a woman with their heads bowed, and that brings up the next rule: she will not pray. She will not say, Please don’t take him from us. Or, I will give up my own life for him. She will not sit in church like a hypocrite and beg for a favor and strike a deal the way some people do, even though she heard Greg whisper, “Please,” once. Such a loud, forceful whisper. He still had his hair that day—charcoal gray and thick. He was looking out the window of the den, and Freddie saw all the leaves gone from the trees but a bright and trustworthy sun, a sheet of diamond frost across the grass.
She will not pray because people pray every day, and often the answer is no. She will not ask a yes/no question because she doesn’t like one of the answers. But her mother and father at the farm pray. Her mother even mailed her their church bulletin that had Greg’s name in it. She imagines all these parishioners praying for a man they’ve never met.
Her rule for all of this is that she play a part: the strong wife in a movie. Maybe a Meryl Streep role. Something Sally Field could do. She can be this woman who doesn’t flinch. Who says I will not let him die.
So when the pager starts vibrating, the circles of red lighting up, she holds it in the air as though she has won something. “That’s us,” she says.
* * *
Greg drinks ginger ale at the table （no ice） and Kay leans over to Addie and asks if she can help her color the holiday scene on the place mat.
“The branch of holly? You’ll let me do that?” She clasps her hands together, and her green-blue eyes sparkle. Addie nods. “Why thank you, Miss Addie.”
“You’re welcome,” Addie says. She pulls her top lip up. “See my tooth?”
Alex leans in. “Goody good,” he says. “What’s the tooth fairy’s going rate these days? I used to just get a note that said, ‘Maybe next time.’？”
Greg and Kay chuckle, and Addie says, “Five dollars.”
Alex looks at Greg and Freddie, eyes wide. “That tooth fairy should come to my house.” He smiles, and then pulls out a five-dollar bill from his pocket. “Here. For when the other one comes out, in case the tooth fairy oversleeps.”
Addie smiles.
“What do you say?” Freddie says.
“Thank you.” Addie hands the money to Greg, who has always been the money keeper. Freddie wonders for a second about money. They have plenty, and she does okay at Crowley’s with her in-high-demand alterations. But she realizes she would miss this terribly—the way Greg takes care of everything. The bills, the online accounts, the check at the restaurant when they’re out together. He always has his credit card ready, always smiling in his charming way, flagging down the server. She imagines a quiet table in a place like this, her and Addie alone. No. She wishes she had a button in her brain that could reset bad thoughts like this.