—Vera

Vera watched with her watery eyes as Vivian read the notepad, and the tears filled and began to spill over. It was a strain to move her right hand up to brush them away. She couldn’t feel it, but the tears were rolling down the left side of her face, too. Violet came into the room carrying a tray with some toast and peanut butter crisscross cookies. When she saw Vera’s face, she rushed to set the tray next to her on the bed, grabbing the cloth napkin to wipe her tears.

“Oh, no, what’s happened?”

Vera knew if that nurse Wally’d hired didn’t work out, her baby sister would happily step in. She’d always been that way.

Vera kept her eyes on Vivian, who looked like she was in a mild state of shock, and Vera didn’t blame her one bit. Vivian, to offer some explanation to their youngest sister or maybe to try to understand it better, opened her mouth and started to read aloud from the notepad she’d just read to herself. As she read, Violet brought a hand to her mouth, wrapping the other arm around her middle. She stood there, with her back to Vera in the bed, shaking her head in dismay. Vera didn’t blame Violet for that, either.

Vivian finished reading and then closed the notepad. She couldn’t look at Vera, lying there helpless in the bed, the tears now unattended by Violet starting to mingle with snot dripping from her nose. Without a word Vivian stood, set the notepad back onto the nightstand, and walked out of the bedroom. Violet looked from Vivian’s retreating figure to Vera in the bed. Vera and Violet heard the front door open and close, and Violet went to the window to see their middle sister (perpetually craving attention!) walking away from the house. She walked right by the Buick parked at the curb, and kept walking down the street until she disappeared from view.

Vera, in her still-alert mind, would never have been able to admit if she’d meant for the gossip about Edward to have the kind of disastrous effect it did. Trickling down through the telephone line from Akron to Wooster, and then exploding in a burst of flames, like a lit cigarette dropped on a stream of gasoline leading right to the pump.

A few neighboring porch lights had switched on by the time Vivian got back to the Irwin house. She hadn’t looked at her wristwatch, but she’d have guessed she’d been gone two or three hours. Her pumps creaked on the floor of the entryway, and she looked into the parlor, where Wally was sitting, staring at the empty, darkened fireplace. He didn’t look up. Vivian guessed the nurse must’ve gone home.

Wally would eventually sleep with the nurse, causing a big scandal in the neighborhood and in the family, but for now he was still in shock, and mourning the loss of his wife the way she used to be. Wondering if he was partly to blame for the stroke. Thinking he shouldn’t have hit her the way he did.