lightened the depth of that old Irish color. “Cara?” his worn voice quavered.
“No, Paw-Paw, it’s Rin.”
The rumpled skin of his brow deepened its crease. He pulled his hand away gently. “I’m sorry, pretty lady. You look just like my daughter.”
“I am your daughter’s daughter. Your granddaughter,” Rin pressed. He turned away and stared through the glass out onto a small lawn rimmed with flowers.
“I apologize for the scare, Ms. Lee.” The nurse smiled. “Sit with him awhile. Talk. Maybe he’ll come back. Maybe he won’t. But don’t give up on him.”
“Never.” Rin swatted at her tears and pulled a chair from the far wall.
“I’ll be making rounds with the doctor soon. If you need anything, someone will be at the desk.”
“Thank you.” Rin forced a smile until Jeanine turned to go. “Will you please pull the door on your way?”
“Of course,” she said, tugging the door in her wake.
Rin’s gaze danced over her grandfather. His red hair had long since faded to a dingy white. His stout frame had narrowed with time. But what feats he’d accomplished in his day.
The People’s Senator. He’d been the only senator of his time—probably ever—who didn’t trade-up. Not on his house. Not on his car. Not on his wife. He’d lived in DC’s Trinidad neighborhood as a speck of white lint on the sleeve of the community for years before de-segregation became a movement—in part to his efforts in politics and his district.
“Thank you, Paw-Paw. Thank you for never giving up on me.” Rin shrugged off her briefcase and jacket and shoved them into the seat next to her. Then she scooted her chair a bit closer. “You may not remember me, but I know you remember Cara.”
“Yes, my Cara.” A grin pulled at one side of his mouth, while the damage of his stroke held the other prisoner. As if Alzheimer’s wasn’t enough to contend with. He turned into himself like her shaky breaths didn’t rattle the gray hairs on his speckled and slightly bruised arm.
That withdrawal sliced her to the bone. Rin cradled her face in her hands and sucked long breaths in an effort to steady her tattered nerves.
“I have a confession,” she whispered. When he didn’t respond after an arduous minute, she continued. “I hated you. It wasn’t your fault, of course, but I needed someone to blame. Someone alive.” Rin wiped the drops from her chin and leaned back. “I rationalized it in my head and made you pay for my mother’s and father’s sins. Truth is, I’m pissed at my mom. If she hadn’t screwed that man and stolen me away without telling him I even existed, he wouldn’t have come for me that day.
“If he hadn’t hit her and ripped me from her arms, she wouldn't have shot him.” The mess of red haunted her to this day, but the look in her mother’s eyes had scared her more. Desperation muddled with rage, topped with mortal fear. “If the courts had not threatened to take me away, if you hadn’t insisted on a party to lighten the mood and reassure your constituents, my mom wouldn’t have taken her life.”
Her wet fingers covered her mouth. “Some company I am, huh? But it gets worse Paw-Paw. So much worse. You always said your daughter wouldn’t take her own life, and she wouldn’t leave me, unless she had business to attend. You said all this contrary to the evidence: an eye witness—that’d be me—and a pulverized body of a woman the same height, weight, age, and hair color as my mom, wearing the same clothing she wore to the party.”
She scrubbed her palms down the front of her slacks. “Why would you say that to a little girl who’d just lost her mother? Why would you give hope when all it did was hurt me? I despised you for that. Sure, I said it was because you made me live in the hood with exactly one fifth of another white girl for ten square blocks. But I’d have lived in Antarctica, if I wasn’t given false hope that withered and died a thousand times over in my