The Love We Missed novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Lolo

I take Nellie back in front of the bridge ladies and ban the Sunday lunches, put the For Sale sign in my lawn, and Patrick pulls up with Bria and her paint swatches and rips it out.

I didn't say anything to her.

I stepped into the front hall and took my daughter off her shoulder.

Nellie was heavy and warm and smelled like somebody else's perfume.

She stirred and wrapped her arms around my neck.

"Mama," she mumbled. "Lolo made pancakes."

"At night?"

"Nana let her."

Behind the blond woman, the living room was full of his mother's bridge friends.

Six women in cashmere with wine glasses, all of them very interested in the carpet.

His mother came out of the kitchen in her pearls.

She was sixty-four and had never once let anyone see her with her hair down.

"Aileen. You could have called first."

"I did call. On speaker. You heard me."

One of the bridge friends coughed into her glass.

His mother's mouth went thin.

"This is Bria Flannery," she said. "Her father and I golf on Thursdays."

"I know who she is," I said. "I pay her rent."

Bria's smile stayed on, but her eyes went to my husband's mother for help.

Nellie lifted her head off my shoulder.

"Lolo comes every Sunday, Mama. She does my braids better than you."

The hall went very quiet.

I work Sundays.

The hotel brunch starts at five, and I'm on the ovens until two.

Patrick had been bringing Nellie here for Sunday lunch since June.

He told me it was good for her to see her Nana.

"Every Sunday," I said. "Since when?"

"Since the start of summer," Bria said brightly. "Your mother-in-law asked me to help out."

"Somebody had to be here," his mother said. "You're never available."

"I'm at work. Paying a mortgage and an apartment on Walnut Street."

The bridge friend by the piano set her glass down very carefully.

I shifted Nellie onto my hip and looked at his mother in front of every one of her friends.

"She doesn't get dropped here again," I said. "Not by me. Not by Patrick."

"You cannot keep a child from her grandmother."

"You can see her. At my house. With me in the room."

"Patrick will have something to say about that."

"Patrick can say it to my lawyer."

I didn't have a lawyer yet.

I would by Monday.

I turned to go.

Bria followed me out onto the front step in that apron.

"I just want you to know there's no hard feelings," she said. "Patrick says I can paint the front door yellow."

I stopped on the walk.

"Which front door?"

"Ours." She said it like it was sweet. "Once you're out. Yellow's so happy, don't you think? And I'm keeping the swing."

"The house goes on the market tomorrow," I said.

She laughed.

"Patrick says you won't."

I buckled Nellie into her car seat and drove home without looking back at the gold windows.

At eight on Saturday morning, I called the realtor from the porch with a cup of coffee going cold on the rail.

By eleven, a white sign with a blue border was hammered into my front lawn.

FOR SALE.

I stood back on the sidewalk and looked at it.

My grandmother had sat on that porch exactly once before she died.

She'd tapped the swing chain and said, "Sturdy. Good."

She had put ninety thousand dollars into this house so I'd have somewhere that was mine.

Patrick wanted to give me sixty for it and hand it to a girl who wanted it yellow.

Nellie was on the swing in her pajamas and rain boots.

"Higher, Mama!"

I pushed her.

The chains creaked the way they always did.

"Is somebody buying our house?"

"Maybe."

"Can the swing come with us?"

"The swing comes with us," I said. "That one's mine."

She kicked her boots in the air and shrieked.

The old woman next door was out on her own porch with her coffee, watching the sign.

She lifted her mug at me.

I lifted mine back.

A car came down the street too fast.

Patrick's black Audi.

It swung into the curb in front of the house and stopped with one tire on the grass.

Bria was in the passenger seat.

She was holding a fan of paint swatches up to the window, every one of them a shade of yellow.

Patrick got out without shutting his door.

He crossed the lawn, grabbed the sign by its post and ripped it out of the ground.

Dirt sprayed across my grandmother's hydrangeas.

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