“Heather?”
“What about Nan?” she asked, though she already knew the answer.
“Oh, honey. I’m so sorry to tell you like this. She died this morning.”
The line was moving forward, so Heather pushed her cart ahead, obedient to the dictates of the queue. It was hard to steer with only one hand. She wrenched the cart in the right direction, her fingers throbbing where they clutched at the handle.
“But . . .” she started. Her mouth had gone dry. She swallowed, licked her lips, tried again. “But Nan was fine the last time I talked to her.”
How long had it been? She usually called on Sundays, but things had been busy at work. Not good busy, just mindless-crap sort of busy, and by the end of the week she was always so tired, and—
“Heather? Are you still there?”
She pushed the cart forward again. “I don’t understand. You didn’t tell me she was sick.”
“I saw her on Wednesday, and she seemed fine enough then. But you know how she hated to admit she was under the weather.”
“I guess,” Heather whispered.
Something was tickling her cheek. She brushed at her face, her fingertips coming away damp with silent, stealthy tears. She rubbed at them with the woolly cuff of her coat, the same stupid coat that didn’t have any pockets. Maybe she had a tissue in her bag.
“What happened?”
“When she didn’t show up for dinner, one of her friends at the Manor checked on her. She was asleep in her chair—the one by the window in her room—and her friend had a hard time waking her up. So they called 911, and then they called us. The doctor said it was pneumonia, the kind that starts as a cold and sneaks up on you. At her age, you know, there isn’t a lot they can do. And we’d talked about it before with her, you know, so we knew she didn’t want it. Any fuss, I mean. So Dad and I stayed with her until . . .”
All last night Nan had been dying, and she hadn’t even known. “Why didn’t you call me?”
“Heather. Honey. You know she wouldn’t have wanted you to see her like that. You know that. She was asleep when we got there, so—”
A sob erupted from Heather’s throat, noisy and mortifying. The placid shoppers around her looked alarmed for a moment, then studiously turned their heads or bent over their phones. Was it kindness or indifference that made them look away?
Another sob, even louder, as if a dam were bursting.
“Heather? Listen to me. Forget the groceries. I want you to take your cart over to the help desk, or whatever they call it, and tell them you need to go. Tell them you have an emergency. Are you listening?”
“Yeah, Mom. I’m listening.” She pulled her cart to the side, steering it carefully so she didn’t bump into anyone. The help desk wasn’t all that far.
“Can Sunita or Michelle come back and get the groceries?”
“I guess.”
“Okay. Then tell whoever’s there that you need to go but your friend will come back for the groceries. Give them your name and number.”
The woman behind the help desk was busy inserting lottery tickets into a countertop display. She glanced up, her smile thinning as she took in Heather’s tearstained face.
“Can I help you?”
“I, uh—”
“Heather. Pass the phone over. I’ll talk to them.”
The woman took the phone when Heather offered it, her questioning frown melting into an expression of sympathy as she listened.
“Hello? Yes? Oh, no. I’m so sorry. Yeah, sure—I can do that. No problem. Okay. No, I won’t hang up.” She handed the phone back. “You’re all set. Your mom explained everything. I’m so sorry about your grandma.”
Heather tried to smile, but even without a mirror she could tell the result was unconvincing. “Thanks. My friend will be along soon.”
She turned herself in the direction of the doors, her phone still tucked against her ear. A minute or two later and she was at her little car. Nan’s old car.
It was an ancient Nissan hatchback, already used when her grandmother had bought it a decade earlier, and entirely lacking in “mod cons,” as Nan liked to say. No air conditioning, no stereo beyond an AM/FM radio, no power steering, and a crank instead of a button to roll down the windows. But it still felt like Nan’s car, and for that reason she would keep it until the wheels fell off.
Collapsing into the driver’s seat, Heather switched her phone to speaker, dumped it onto the dash, and rested her head on the steering wheel.