— Eleanor asked directly.
A quiet exhale on the other end.
— Yes, — Susan said.
— Then thank you, — Eleanor said.
Susan went quiet. It was the kind of silence people fall into when they don’t know what to do with unexpected gratitude. You can’t reject it, and you can’t quite accept it cleanly either, so you just stand there with it. Susan found her footing first.
— How are they? — she asked. — The pups?
Eleanor told her. Briefly, in order: the food change had been forced, Quiet got sick, rice water, the night by the crate, by morning he was eating again.
Susan listened without interrupting. Eleanor could hear her breathing and the occasional soft “mm-hmm,” which meant I’m here, keep going. That is how people listen when they are genuinely interested.
— That’s a lot, — Susan said when Eleanor finished. Not with pity and not with criticism. Just stating a fact, the way you state the weather or the road conditions.
— It is, — Eleanor said.
They were quiet for a moment. But now it was a different silence from the one at the start. As if the first layer of tension had come off, and underneath was something less rigid and not nearly as cold.
— Eleanor, — Susan began, and there was caution in her voice, the caution of someone who has been waiting a long time for the right opening. — We didn’t come back then. After Walter’s funeral.
Eleanor said nothing. She had expected this, or perhaps she hadn’t. At that moment she couldn’t have said which.
— Daniel was in the hospital then, — Susan said quietly. — Mike never told you?
— No, — Eleanor said.
— He didn’t want to upset you, — Susan went on. — He said we’d explain later, when things settled down. Then somehow later never came.
Eleanor sat at the table and looked at the tabletop. Eight years. Daniel had been in the hospital, and she had not known. Mike had not said anything because he didn’t want to add their trouble to her grief. It was its own crooked kind of logic, but it was logic. The hurt did not become right or wrong because of that. It simply lost the foundation it had been standing on all those years.
— Why didn’t you tell me later? — Eleanor asked. — After Daniel got better?
— You didn’t ask, — Susan said. — And Mike… he doesn’t know how to explain things like that. It’s easier to stay quiet. Time passes, the moment goes, and then you don’t know how to start anymore.
Eleanor heard that and thought: yes, he doesn’t. She knew where it came from. She had taught it herself. Handle it yourself, don’t wait to be asked, don’t explain, just do what needs doing. Mike had learned it well. Maybe too well. Well enough that now years of silence stood between them where certain things should have been said. She did not say that out loud. Some things do not need to be spoken in order to become true.
— I always wanted to come, — Susan said, and now there was a defenseless plainness in her voice. — Mike kept saying, your mom doesn’t like company, better not push.
— I said that about other people, — Eleanor said. — Not about you.
Silence on the other end. Then Eleanor heard Susan swallow once, quietly.
— Maybe we could come this summer?
