The Weird Sisters - Eleanor Brown [123]
Rose wanted to object again, opened her mouth even, but then just nodded. “Okay,” she said, her determined drive cooling. “Let me talk to Cordy.”
“Hel-lo,” Cordy answered the phone. “We’re fine. Stop worrying.”
“How do you know I’m worrying?”
“Because this isn’t the first time I’ve met you,” Cordy said. “I talked to the doctor. I wrote everything down. You can obsess over it when you come back.”
“Are you sure you don’t need me?” Rose asked, and though she tried to sound determined and responsible, her voice was pitched and keening. She cleared her throat.
“We are going to be just fine. I have to hang up—the phone’s attached to the bed and the nurse is trying to get in here. Okay? Have fun! Send us a postcard!” There was a series of clatters and some murmuring as Cordy fumbled to hang up the phone, and then the line went dead.
On her end, Rose slammed down the receiver but kept her hand on it, as though she were expecting—hoping—it would ring again. It stayed frustratingly silent.
So this was it, then. She’d been replaced. Bean and Cordy were going to be the ones to put everything right. She thought of herself sweeping around the living room at home, putting bookmarks in the books to save their spines, dusting the lampshade, pushing everyone out the door to get to church on time. Apparently we could have done it without her all along.
She threw her things into a backpack and left the confines of the small rooms without a plan. It was nearly noon and the streets were swelled with tourists. A tour group passed in front of her, the tour guide holding a closed umbrella high like a lantern. At the back of the crowd, two women in kitten heels struggled along the stone street, the tiny points of their shoes slipping into the worn cracks between the stones. Rose looked down at her sensible, heavy walking shoes and pushed ahead.
So she was useless, then. We only wanted her if we were feeling too lazy to do what we were apparently perfectly capable of.
If only we’d been there to talk to her, to soothe those fears, to tell her that no, we could not have done it without her all those years, it was only now, only after all we had been through, only because we had seen her managing things that we could step in and take up the reins, do our part. That what Jonathan had said was right—people could change.
That maybe the time was ripe for her to change, too.
Or maybe she would figure that out for herself.
Rose strode down street after street, twisting into backways, residential corners hidden behind the colleges, stomping angrily along the sidewalks. People passed in a blur. She ignored the newsstands, the headlines written in thick marker on sheets of paper, always the same mysteriously tidy handwriting, screeching at her.
A tiny alley spit her out onto the High Street, flooded with people. She struggled through the traffic. The sidewalks clogged with a collision of nations who drove, and therefore walked, on different sides of the pavement. Her feet beat a tattoo as she turned things over in her mind. If she’d been home, if Jonathan hadn’t been offered this job, if . . . if . . . if . . .
In front of Carfax Tower, ninety-nine steps to the top, she paused. A school group scampered ahead of her, following a tiny National Trust guide inside. She paid the fee and then stepped into the darkness. It wasn’t until she had started the climb that she could feel her heart flickering inside her chest, and went immediately into the measured breathing that kept the pounding in her head quiet. Far above her, the children emerged onto the rooftop; above the traffic and the chatter of a thousand languages she could hear them calling to each other, teasing as they leaned dizzily over the edge.
What if she couldn’t make it to the top? What if she passed out? She didn’t even have Jonathan’s office number with her, and then they wouldn’t be able to get ahold of him until he got home....
At that moment, she hated herself.