The Voicemail Nine Days After I Left

I stood there so long my hand went numb on the rail.

Then I did the hardest thing I have ever done. I sat down on the top step and I called Aunt Lynn instead, my father’s older sister in Ainsworth.

She picked up on the second ring. “Well, it’s about time. I’ve known for two weeks. Connie called me the first morning. I was waiting on you to be ready.”

I told her all of it. The supper table. The four hundred dollars. What my father said and what Jake said. The voicemails, every one. And then the emergency room.

She did not interrupt once. Aunt Lynn was the secretary at the grade school in Ainsworth for thirty-four years, and she can listen to a whole story and hold it still.

When I finished there was a long quiet on the line.

“He called you a burden,” she said. “My brother said that. In Diane’s kitchen.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“With Dale sitting there.”

“Yes.”

I heard her set something down hard. A coffee cup, I think.

“Abby, you listen to me. Do not go over to that hospital. I’m going to call up there right now, I’ve known the head nurse since she was in the second grade. I’ll find out how he is and call you right back. And tomorrow I am driving out to that ranch.”

“Aunt Lynn, you don’t have to do that.”

“I know I don’t have to. I have been wanting to for six years.”

She called back in twenty minutes. He was all right. He had been taking two of the blood pressure pill every morning, because two of the bottles looked alike, and he had not taken the blood thinner in nine days because nobody could settle which blue one it was. They gave him fluids, kept him three hours, and had the pharmacist come over and sort out the sack.

“He’s home,” she said. “He’s fine. He’s cranky as a wet cat. Now get some sleep.”

I did not, much.

The next morning I was off at one. I had just come upstairs when my phone rang, and it was her.

“I’m standing in your mother’s kitchen,” Aunt Lynn said. Her voice was very low and very even. “Your father is at the table. Your brother is at the table. Dale just came in for coffee and I’ve asked him to stay. I am going to put this phone on speaker and set it down, and I don’t want you to say a single word. I just want you to hear it. Can you do that?”

My mouth had gone dry. “Yes, ma’am.”

I heard a click, and then the hollow sound of a room. A chair creaked. The rooster clock was ticking. It was running, so somebody had not let the battery die yet.

“Lynn, what is this,” my father said. He sounded tired.

“Sit, Gary.”

“I am sitting.”

“Then stay that way.” I heard her walk. Her church heels on that linoleum. “I got here at ten o’clock this morning. Nobody was in the house, so I let myself in. I have been standing in this kitchen for three hours, and I want to tell you what I found.”

Nobody said anything.

“There are two weeks of dishes in that sink. There’s a skillet on the stove with something in it I would not feed a dog. There’s a pizza box on the table and paper towels where the plates go. The trash has not been out. There is a pile of mail on Diane’s desk a foot high, and two of the envelopes say Past Due in red, and one of them is from the bank.”