The Man Who Can't Let Her Go novel · Chapter 2 of 24
Chapter 2: Next of Kin
At the hospital a nurse calls Lydia Mrs. VanAlen, Hayden shows her the unsigned papers, and Henrietta refuses treatment unless Lydia moves back into the house for thirty days.
The night nurse at Maple Street Hospital looked up at Lydia and did not ask her name.
"Mrs. VanAlen," the nurse said. "Room 412. She's been asking for you since Tuesday."
Lydia stopped with her hand on the counter.
"I'm Lydia Winthrop."
"The chart says VanAlen." The nurse tapped her screen. "You're listed as next of kin. Mr. VanAlen wouldn't change it."
Lydia had signed away that name three years ago.
She had mailed the pages herself, from a post office in Port Alder, and cried in the parking lot afterward.
Footsteps rang down the corridor behind her.
Hayden had caught up in a taxi of his own, still in the suit from the party, with confetti on his shoulder.
He stopped two feet from her and read the nurse's face.
"She hasn't changed it," the nurse said, a little too fast. "I'm sorry, sir. I only read what's there."
"Leave it," Hayden said.
Lydia turned on him.
"You told the hospital I was still your wife."
"You are my wife."
"I signed papers."
"Nothing ever came to me," he said, low.
"Cissy said you'd started them. She said you'd call when you were ready."
"I never called," Lydia said.
"No."
"She said you told her to tell me to sign and stay away."
They stared at each other under the corridor lights.
Neither of them got further.
A doctor in green scrubs opened the door of 412.
"She's awake," he said, "and she wants both of you."
Henrietta VanAlen sat propped on four pillows with a tube under her nose and her pearls on over the hospital gown.
She was eighty-four years old and the smallest person in the room.
She looked at Lydia for a long moment.
"You've cut your hair," she said.
Lydia's throat closed.
"Hello, Grandma."
"Don't you Grandma me. Come here."
Lydia crossed the room, and Henrietta took her wrist in a dry, strong grip and held it hard.
"Three years," Henrietta said. "Three Christmases. I had the cook make your chestnut stuffing every time, and nobody ate it."
"I'm sorry."
"You are not sorry yet. But you will be."
Hayden stood at the foot of the bed with his hands in his pockets.
"Grandma, the doctor said you shouldn't talk."
"The doctor says I need a new heart valve or I'll be dead by spring."
Henrietta did not look at him.
"I told him no."
Lydia felt the floor lurch.
"Why?"
"Because I am not going under a knife for a family that cannot sit at one table."
Henrietta let go of Lydia's wrist and folded her hands.
"Here are my terms. Lydia moves back into the house on Larch Row for thirty days."
"One roof," she went on. "She eats at his table and he eats at hers."
"Grandma," Hayden said.
"On the thirty-first day, if either of you wants out, I will sign whatever papers you like with my own hand."
"And I will have my operation."
Lydia thought of the child she had lost in this city.
She thought of three years of learning to sleep on one side of a bed.
"You can't make us," she said.
"I can't," Henrietta said. "But I can die."
Nobody in the room breathed.
The door opened a hand's width, and Cissy slipped in with a paper cup of tea in each hand.
She had changed out of the pale dress into a gray coat, and her eyes were pink.
"I thought you'd both need something warm," she said softly.
She set one cup on the tray beside Henrietta.
She put the other into Lydia's hands and closed Lydia's fingers around it.
"I heard through the door. Please say yes, Lydia."
"I'll make up the east wing tonight and put fresh sheets on."
"I'll keep out of your way. I've slept in the guest house for three years, and I can sleep there thirty days more."
"Thank you," Lydia said, because there was nothing else to say.
Cissy squeezed her hands and stepped back to the wall, silent.
Henrietta looked at Lydia.
"Well?"
Lydia looked at Hayden.
He had not moved from the foot of the bed.
He was not asking her for anything.
His jaw was locked and his eyes were on her face.
His right hand had come out of his pocket and closed on the bed rail, white at the knuckles.
That hand had held hers at the altar.
It had been shaking then, too.
"Thirty days," Lydia said. "Then I fly home."
"Agreed," Henrietta said, quick as a trap.
"And he keeps his hands to himself."
Hayden's voice came out dry.
"Agreed."
Henrietta closed her eyes and smiled.
"Good. Now somebody fetch the doctor before I change my mind about being a reasonable woman."
Lydia drank her tea without tasting it.
When she looked up, Cissy was already at the door, holding it open for her, her hand on the frame.
"I'll go ahead and open the house," Cissy said. "Don't worry about a thing."
On the nightstand, beside the water jug, lay a small stack of cards addressed to Henrietta.
Not one of them had been opened.
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