He shrugged and spit again.
“I’ll call and leave Bobby a voice message then,” he said. “Tell him you’re okay. They’re due to land in Detroit, but they’re canceling flights left and right on account of the storm. I don’t think they’ll make it up here until tomorrow.”
“What storm?” I said.
“I don’t know,” he said. “The one they had on the Weather Channel this morning. They got their map all covered up in them blue snowflakes. They got reporters live at all the airports in the Midwest. Mass chaos. Good for ratings.”
“I’d appreciate it if you would,” I said. “I hate that they’ve been so worried.”
“You want to use my phone, call them yourself?”
“No,” I said. “Probably better if you do. Make it official.”
“Done and done,” he said. “Now, let’s go get that piece of Jap crap you call a truck.”
Granger stood and tucked his hat beneath his arm. He walked across the room all stiff and straight, like cops do, then waited for me at the door.
He hadn’t said word one about Mama, which meant her Bonneville hadn’t been at Shelton Potter’s and that they hadn’t seen her when they searched out the north hills. Which meant she was still missing. She was as gone as she was the night I set out for the farmhouse and I had a sick feeling like maybe this time she wasn’t coming home at all.
It hit me with Granger right there in the room. A blast of fear that tore a hole straight through my stomach—down in the nervy, low part where sometimes you know things without knowing how.
“Percy,” Granger said. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
I stood up off the couch and put my hoodie on.
“Compared to what?” I said.
Chapter Twenty
I was at the airport in Pellston the next morning, watching through the terminal window as Starr’s little puddle jumper floated in from Detroit. There were five or six other people inside and we were all standing around the giant brown bear mount—Cutler’s airport basically being a hunting lodge with airplanes and landing strips.
Everybody was going on about what they were calling “the shootings” and I pretended to ignore them as the plane landed and then rolled to a stop. Starr was the first on the stairs and when she saw me through the glass she came running.
I promised myself I wouldn’t cry, but I was bawling as bad as my sister by the time we hugged. And Starr kept on crying. She about soaked my shoulders with tears before she finally let go and wiped at her eyes with her coat sleeves.
“We got to get you a phone that works,” she said. “Jesus Christ, Percy.”
“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“Be sorry while we smoke,” she said. “I’m about to die.”
Bobby was standing behind her and he hugged me and put me in a little headlock before we followed Starr outside.
There were a few cars scattered in the parking lot and the wind blew and tossed around some corn snow while Starr dug the smokes out of her bag. She hunched her shoulders when she stood and Bobby blocked the wind behind her. She lit up and offered me the cigarette and when I took it she tapped out another for herself.
“I’m sorry you had to fly out,” I said. “But I’m glad you’re here.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “We would have come for the funeral either way. The bad part is not having Tanner.”
“Is he okay?”
“He’ll be fine,” Starr said. “He’s on antibiotics now. We could have brought him in another day.”
“I want to see him,” I said.
“We’ll Skype when we get to Wanda’s. She’s cooking up a feast for tonight, so you can stay for dinner too.”
Wanda was Bobby’s mom and she always put out a good spread.
“I’d say bring Mama,” she went on. “But I don’t really want to see her and I got this funny feeling you don’t have any clue where she is.”
I looked at my sister but didn’t know what to say.
“Shit, Percy,” she said. “I never thought she’d stay sober. I’ve known she fell off since the fall. Or at least I suspected.”
“I suspected you suspected,” I said.
“I figured as much,” she said.
“I should have told you.”
“I’m glad you didn’t,” she said. “I couldn’t have done a thing about it anyway, not with a new baby and being all the way out there in Portland. I wanted that time to be with Tanner and not all caught up in Carletta’s bullshit. You didn’t want to tell me and I didn’t want to press you on it. We’re even.”
We stood there for a moment in the quiet and I looked up at the cloud-chalky sky and let the silence settle. It was the kind of quiet Carletta put between people, and nobody more than Starr and me—a silence full up with everything that couldn’t be fixed and didn’t need saying again. It was familiar, though, and in that way of some comfort.