“If you’d been married to that prick, you wouldn’t be so sappy, ‘that last good-bye’ and all that movie crap,” Sandra snapped.

She stopped at an outcry from her daughter, but the two began quarreling again over whether Bron really had a plan to find the money they needed for April’s health care.

“He called Mr. Grobian, and Mr. Grobian said he could come in and discuss it, Daddy told me that himself,” April said to her mother, scarlet-faced.

“You never understood that your father told people what they wanted to hear, not what the truth was. How do you think I ended up marrying him, anyway?” She bit the words off angrily.

“When did your dad tell you about Grobian?” I asked April. “Monday morning?”

“He was making me lunch when we got back from the hospital.” April blinked back tears. “Tuna fish sandwiches. He cut the crust off the bread like he used to when I was a baby. He wrapped me in a blanket and tucked me in his recliner and fed me, me and Big Bear. He said not to worry, he was going to talk to Mr. Grobian, it would be all right. Then Billy came, and he said if I could wait eight years until he got his trust fund he’d pay for the surgery, but Daddy said we couldn’t take charity, even if we could wait so long, and he was going to see Mr. Grobian.”

Sandra slapped the tabletop so hard her weak tea slopped out of the mug. “That is so damn typical! Him talking to you and not his own wife!”

April’s lower lip quivered, and she hugged Big Bear tightly to herself. Patrick Grobian hadn’t exactly struck me as the warmhearted Santa of the South Side. If Bron had been going to see him, it must have been to put the bite on him in some way, but when I suggested this April sat up again.

“No! Why are you taking her side against Daddy? He said he had a document from Mr. Grobian, it was all businesslike, shipshape.”

“Why didn’t you tell me before?” Sandra cried. “I could have asked Grobian when I saw him this morning.”

“Because you kept saying like you’re saying now, how his ideas were dumb and wouldn’t work.”

“So neither of you know whether he actually did talk to Grobian, or what this document might be? Sandra, when did you actually talk to Bron for the last time?”