The Second Silence Read Free Page B

nor there. But the truth was simply too awful to face. ‘She won’t help. She doesn’t want anything to do with me or—or the baby. Charlie, please. We can go to your mom. She’ll know what to do.’
    ‘Maybe. If she’s sober.’ The knotted muscles in Charlie’s jaw flickered with everything best left unsaid on that subject. Moments later they were jouncing over the deep pothole that marked the end of the driveway. Her jaws clacked together, catching the tip of her tongue between her teeth. She felt a bright burst of pain.
    Mary sucked her cheeks in, tasting blood. ‘This is crazy. Have you forgotten what happened the last time?’
    Christmas morning, with Noelle just a week old, Mary had phoned home in a flush of holiday spirit and optimism. Her parents were aware of the baby’s existence, she knew, because a nurse at the hospital had mentioned something about a Mrs Quinn’s stopping by to peek into the nursery. Yet over the phone, Mama had been nothing more than civil. The furnace was acting up, she reported, but Mr Wilson had promised to be out first thing tomorrow to fix it. And no, they weren’t driving all the way to Binghamton for turkey dinner at Aunt Stella’s. Daddy simply wasn’t up to it; he’d been laid up all week with a bad cough. Trish couldn’t come to the phone either, she said; wild horses couldn’t separate her from her new transistor radio.
    After a strained minute or two Mama excused herself to go look in on Daddy. Not once had she asked about her grandchild or how Mary was getting along. It was as if Noelle hadn’t existed, and she herself were little more than a distant memory. It was worse, Mary concluded miserably, than if her mother had simply hung up.
    ‘She can’t ignore us this time.’ Charlie gripped the steering wheel, leaning close to swipe a clear patch in the foggy windshield.
    Mary cast an anxious glance at her baby’s flushed face peeking from the folds of the afghan. Miraculously Noelle had been lulled to sleep by the rattle of the pickup as it lurched its way down the hilly, twisting road to town. Charlie’s right, she thought. This was the only sane choice. And Mama wasn’t completely heartless. Hadn’t she at least cared enough to sneak a look at her granddaughter?
    Five miles down the road, where Route 30A joined up with Route 30, the houses began to appear: large, square clapboard houses built in the thirties, with well-kept lawns and neatly trimmed boxwood hedges. The house Mary had grown up in occupied the corner of Larkspur and Cardinal. Nearly indistinguishable from the houses on either side, it was shaded by large spreading elms and maples and had a deep porch that wrapped around three sides.
    As Charlie pulled up on front, Mary was stricken by a wave of nostalgia. It was all so blessedly, innocently familiar: the hand-painted sign over the mailbox, the nuthatches fluttering about the bird feeder, the porch glider with its memories of lazy summer afternoons spent with a book in hand and her feet tucked under her. She noted with a dull throb that the drainpipe was still loose, leaning away from the side of the house like a sentry nodding off at his post—one of the projects her father hadn’t gotten around to before he fell ill.
    Charlie reached over to cup a hand over hers. ‘Do you want to wait here while I ring the bell?’
    Mary glanced again at Noelle, feeling her throat tighten. ‘No, I’ll come with you.’ Mama would have to be a monster to turn away her own grandchild, sick as she was.
    As she made her way up the front walk, the baby in her arms and Charlie’s arm firmly anchored about her waist, Mary forced herself to hold her head high. I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for Noelle, she told herself. I’m not asking for anything for myself.
    Nonetheless, as she waited on the porch, Mary’s heart was pounding so hard she was certain it could be heard through the heavy oak door just as surely as she could hear the faint, measured tread