The Weird Sisters - Eleanor Brown [121]
Cordy, who was pulling into the fabric that covered her like a turtle, shot back sharply, “You’re giving me advice, Bean? If you hadn’t been home, where would you have been? In bed with your married lover? Like I’m supposed to give you a medal that you weren’t fucking him right at the time that Mom needed help?”
“I broke it off with him,” Bean spat, steely.
“Then it just would have been someone else,” Cordy said quietly, and they froze for a moment, Bean because it was so true, and Cordy because she had never said anything quite so cruel before.
“You’re in no condition to go casting moral aspersions on anyone,” Bean said, and placed her glass in the sink. “Now I have the infinite pleasure of calling Rose and telling her the news. Unless you’d like to do the honors.”
Cordy worried the sleeves of her sweatshirt against her fingers. “If you want me to.”
“Don’t be an idiot. You weren’t even here,” Bean said, and flounced off to phone Rose.
When the phone rang in that strange, double-toned way Rose was sure she would never get used to, she sprang into wakefulness with a gasp. Jonathan rolled over sleepily and answered it. “Hello?” he asked, and Rose could hear the mumbled pitch of Bean’s voice. “No, it’s okay. Is everything okay?” A pause. “She’s right here. Hang on.”
“What’s wrong?” Rose asked, clutching the phone in her hand.
“Charming to speak to you, too,” Bean said dryly. Her voice echoed tinnily in Rose’s ear. “I see England hasn’t improved your manners any.”
“Shut up, Bean. It’s five in the morning here—you wouldn’t be calling if there weren’t something wrong. What’s going on? Is it Mom?” Rose was already standing, fumbling for her clothes, which she had uncharacteristically left scattered on the floor. The phone cord scraped across Jonathan’s nose and he pulled on it, forcing Rose back onto the bed.
Bean sighed loudly, as though it were Rose who had interrupted her sleep. “Yeah, Mom’s in the hospital.”
“What?” Rose shrieked. Jonathan leaned over and put his hand on her bare thigh, the warmth of his skin shocking. “I’m gone for a few days and she’s in the hospital? What happened?”
Bean explained quietly, patiently. Rose was nearly panting, her teeth gritted hard, scraping against each other as she wrapped her fingers in the sheets. Why was this happening when she was over here? She should be the one taking care of a crisis. She would have known what to do, whom to call for help, how to talk to the doctors. There was no way Bean and Cordy could be managing things half as well as she would have.
“What’s the number of the hospital?” she asked. She snapped her fingers at Jonathan, who rolled over and then back, producing a pad and pen where she jotted down the number. “Okay. Call me if anything changes.” She walked over to Jonathan’s side of the bed to hang up and then began to dial again, but Jonathan put his hand on her wrist.
“She’s okay, right?”
“That’s what Bean says, but I want to hear it from the doctor. Would you let me dial?”
“No,” Jonathan said. He kept his hand on hers and reached out with the other to take the receiver, putting it back in the cradle. He pulled her down so she was sitting on the edge of the bed beside him. “It’s the middle of the night there. Let them sleep. You can talk to the doctor in the morning.”
Rose looked at him, his hair sleep-rumpled, his eyes tired. “But what if . . .”
Jonathan smiled, slipped his hands over her palms and then lifted them to his lips and kissed each one in turn. “You can’t control everything from three thousand miles away, Rose. Let them take care of things.”
“I won’t be able to sleep if I don’t talk to someone there.”
“Then we’ll stay awake together,” he said, and pulled her down beside him, tucking her body under his arm and kissing her forehead softly as the dawn broke around them and the old city stirred.
When Cordy and Bean awoke in the morning, the house was like an empty pea pod, and they rattled around inside, always seeming to be in each other’s way, despite the