Chapter 8: The Logs

Alden had never seen his mother afraid.

She stood in the hotel corridor with Lucinda's hands in hers, and her own hands were trembling.

"I divorced her," he said. "She signed. It was done."

"When?"

"Nine days ago."

"You filed the petition."

"That morning. You were in Zurich. I didn't want a fight."

"I have been trying to fly home for nine days," Eleanor said. "A strike, a storm and a cancelled connection, and you knew it."

Eleanor let go of Lucinda and turned to face him completely.

She was sixty-two and a head shorter than he was, and for a second he was eleven years old.

"I told you to wait," she said. "I told you on the phone, every week, for a month. Wait until I come home."

"You told me to wait. You never said why."

"I shouldn't have to."

"That's not an answer."

"No," his mother said. "It isn't."

Lucinda had already stepped back.

She was looking at the floor, with her face closed.

He had never asked himself what that face meant.

"Eleanor," Lucinda said quietly. "It's all right. I'm all right."

"It isn't all right."

"I'd like to go home."

"You have a home," Eleanor said. "I don't mean the house. I mean your own. Go there. The driver will take you."

Lucinda nodded once.

She left without looking at Alden.

The donors had drifted off in whispers.

His mother watched Lucinda go until the corridor door closed.

Then she turned back to him.

"What did she tell you about Hollis Hill?"

"Nothing. Where is that?"

Eleanor shut her eyes.

"Mother. What is going on?"

"Ask her."

"I'm asking you."

"I have kept a promise for three years," Eleanor said. "I will not break it in a corridor. Ask her. And if she answers, Alden, count yourself lucky."

She walked away.

He drove home alone.

The house was dark except for the light over the front door.

The housekeeper had gone to bed.

He went up to the second floor, to the room they had called the study, where the nursing equipment had sat for three years against the far wall.

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