Endurance - Jack Kilborn [53]
She goes to the door, tries the knob. Locked.
Maria slams her shoulder into it. The door is solid. It won’t budge.
I can’t give up. Not now. Not when I’m this close.
But as Maria looks around the room, she has no clue how they can escape.
Letti Pillsbury stood in the doorway of the Ulysses S. Grant room, looking at her mother crouch on the floor.
“Do you normally check under the bed every place you sleep?” Letti asked.
“Hmm? No, of course not.” Florence stood up, smoothing some imaginary wrinkles from her pants. She looked perturbed, which wasn’t something Letti could ever recall seeing.
“Okay, then. You wanted to talk. Let’s talk.”
The older woman seemed confused, and for a moment Letti questioned her mother’s health. After all, her health was the reason she was moving in with her and Kelly.
“I want you to understand, Letti.”
“Understand what, Florence?” Letti crossed her arms, determined not to make it easy for her.
“Why I didn’t come to your husband’s funeral.”
“I know why you didn’t come, Florence. You were off in Bosnia or Ethiopia or one of your other causes.”
“I was in Mumbai. Doing volunteer work, Letti, during the floods. We were saving lives. Peter, bless your husband’s heart, was already dead. There wasn’t anything I could do for him.”
She doesn’t get it. Maybe she never will.
“Peter didn’t need you, Florence. I did.”
Florence raised an eyebrow. “So you’re saying your grief is more important than building a dam that saved three hundred lives?”
Letti refused to let her eyes tear up. “I was devastated. I needed my mother.”
“I raised you so you wouldn’t need me.”
“You’re impossible,” Letti turned to leave. She felt Florence’s hand on her shoulder.
“What do you want me to say, Letti? That I made the wrong choice? You’re strong. Always were. Peter’s death was a terrible tragedy, but I knew you could handle it. Mumbai needed me more.”
This is a waste of time. She’ll die before she apologizes.
But she’s right. I am strong. And I will not cry.
Letti spun around, feeling the scowl take over her face. “If Mumbai is so goddamn important, why didn’t you go running there when you were diagnosed with cancer?”
Florence flinched. Letti immediately felt bad for saying it, but she was on a roll.
“You didn’t, though. You came to me, Florence. Me and Kelly. I thought it was because you wanted to mend fences. To get to know your granddaughter. But money is the real reason, isn’t it? You gave away all of yours, helping strangers. Now you need a place to die, and my house is a free hospice.”
Florence kept her face calm, but Letti saw something behind it crack. “Oh… Letti… is that what you think?”
Letti bit her lower lip. She felt the tears coming, but refused to blink. “We needed you, Florence. Kelly and I. And you weren’t there. But now you need us, and here we are. Maybe Mumbai built a big stature to Saint Florence for saving their village. But I never wanted to be raised by a saint. I wanted a Mom.”
“And I wasn’t a mother to you.” Florence said it as a statement.
“Mothers nurture.” Letti said. She felt the tear roll down her cheek. “Mothers support. Mothers show up at the goddamn funeral when their daughters lose their husbands.”
Florence said nothing. She just stood there, stoic as ever.
I might as well be talking to a statue.
“It’s so important to me for you to understand why I did it, Letti.”
“I know why you did it, Florence. But I’ll never understand it. And I’ll never forgive you for it.”
Florence opened her mouth, but no sound came out.
Point. Match. Game.
So why did it still feel like losing?
Letti walked out of the room, shutting the door behind her. She went down the hall to the Grover Cleveland room and let herself in. For a moment, she felt like giving in to the tears, crying her eyes out. But she pushed the feeling down. The last time she cried was at Peter’s funeral. She’d lost two people that day. Her husband, and her mother.
Letti wouldn’t allow herself to cry over her mother again.
She took a deep breath through her