Karen nodded.
“She says that word when she wants something to sound settled.”
Karen put the mug down.
“She also said I should be there because I am his aunt.”
I waited.
“She did not tell me what she expected me to say.”
“Did she ask you to take him anywhere?”
Karen’s eyes lifted quickly.
“No.”
“Did she ask you to meet her somewhere?”
wait at the hospital.”
“When?”
“She said she would tell me.”
I glanced at the folded paper beside her plate.
“What’s that?”
“My parking receipt from yesterday.”
She picked it up and folded it once, then again.
“She told me to keep it.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
I let that answer stand.
Karen looked down at the paper. “Elena, I think she has an idea in her head about how this is supposed to go.”
“What idea?”
“She has not told me.”
That was the answer I carried home.
At 5:40, Daniel and I sat at the dining room table with our calendars open between us. He circled Friday’s delivery date and then drew another circle around the time printed beneath it.
“Seven thirty,” he said.
“Yes.”
He looked at his phone.
“Vivian asked Karen to wait at the hospital.”
I put my pencil down.
“When?”
“She did not
say.”
“Did she tell you why?”
Daniel rubbed the pencil between his fingers. “No.”
I watched him read the message again.
“Ask her.”
“I already did.”
“And?”
“She said Mom wants Karen nearby.”
“Nearby for what?”
Daniel looked at the calendar.
“I don’t know.”
The answer bothered me because he had begun with “I should have” so many times lately, and this time he did not.
He folded the calendar closed.
“I’ll ask Vivian.”
“Not tonight.”
He looked at me.
“Why not?”
“Because I want Karen to tell me what Vivian says when she thinks nobody is checking.”
Daniel opened his mouth, then shut it.
I gathered the calendars into one stack.
The delivery was Friday.
Karen was being placed somewhere at the hospital before that day arrived.
I still did not know what Vivian expected her to do there.
