“No,” Mom agreed. “I wouldn’t tell them now, anyway. Maybe when they’re older. Like you two.”
Lori felt a little glow—Mom trusts us! She thought about her rough-and-tumble younger brothers and felt sorry for them. If she were either of them, she would feel responsible, as if she’d caused her father’s death. But she didn’t blame them. Probably they wouldn’t blame themselves, either. They wouldn’t even take the blame for leaving the toilet seat up.
Chuck was thinking, Now Joey and Mike will have something to deal with, too. He wasn’t sure what he meant by that. He could just see his younger brothers, hitting home runs like it was as natural as breathing, easily guiding their 4-H hogs around the ring, begging Pop to drive the tractor instead of running from the chore. They always fit in so well. Everything was so simple for them. But this bombshell was waiting for them somewhere in the future.
For the first time in years, Chuck felt like the big brother, wanting to protect his younger siblings. Maybe Mom should never tell. Maybe she shouldn’t have told him and Lori.
“I’ve always wondered—was God offering me a choice?” Mom mused aloud. “My husband or my child?”
“Mo-om!” Lori was shocked. “God doesn’t work that way. Besides, falling off the high chair wouldn’t have killed Joey.”
Mom didn’t seem to hear her.
“It felt like I made a choice,” she said. She looked straight at Lori. “You accused me of being happy that Tom died. You have to know I wasn’t. I would have given anything I had—anything I have—to have him back, alive again. Anything except one of you kids.”
Lori gulped.
In the morning, they were all extrapolite with one another, like people tiptoeing around an invalid.
“If you’d rather take the first shower, you can,” Lori offered Chuck, even though she’d practically trampled his toes to get ahead of him in every other city.
“Will the noise bother you if I turn on Good Morning, America to check the weather?” Mom asked Lori.
“Should I start the coffeemaker for you?” Chuck asked Mom. “I can, if you want.”
When they were all ready, Mom beckoned Lori and Chuck over to the small, round table at the back of the hotel room, where she was sitting. The tabletop was strewn with maps and guidebooks and tourist brochures, giving Lori quite a jolt.
Los Angeles? We’re in Los Angeles? She’d practically forgotten. She pulled a drape back from the window, and a palm tree brushed the other side of the glass. Surreal. It seemed like a mirage.
“Do you want to go to Hollywood or Disneyland today?” Mom asked. “I thought we’d have time to do some planning last night, but . . .” She let the words trail off. Nobody needed to be reminded of what they’d talked about instead.
So that’s how it is, Lori thought. Daddy dying is a taboo subject again.
“Hollywood’s a lot seedier than you would expect,” Mom said. “But it’s still one of those places you feel like you have to see. If we don’t get to it today, we can always swing by tomorrow before the airport. Disney’s a full day, of course. I know you guys are too old for Mickey Mouse, but you’d love Space Mountain, Lori. And, Chuck, you might like—”
“Why didn’t you sue?” Lori asked.
Mom froze.
“What?” she said.
“Why didn’t you sue?” Lori asked again. “The tractor company or the insurance company or somebody. For Daddy dying.”
Mom straightened a pile of brochures, as if it really mattered that the corners were lined up.
“You can’t do this,” she said. “You can’t keep ambushing me. That’s all over, okay? We can’t live in the past. Weren’t you listening to my speech last night?” She grinned, as if trying to let Lori know she was half joking.
Lori shook her head stubbornly. No. I wasn’t listening. I had other things on my mind.
“Could you have sued?” Chuck asked.
Mom looked from her daughter to her son and sighed.
“Okay,” she said. She shoved the guidebooks and tourist pamphlets and maps to the floor. Chuck and Lori watched in amazement. Mom didn’t seem to care what a mess she’d made. She didn’t even look. When the table was clear, Mom folded her hands in front of her. “Let’s get this all out now. I talk, you talk, and then we let this go. All right?”
Speechlessly, Chuck and Lori nodded. Mom took a deep breath.
“Suing,” she said, “was never an option. Do you know how old that tractor was? It ran on gasoline, not diesel, you know—I’m not sure anyone was still making gasoline tractors when I was born. The tractor company had gone out of business years ago. So there was no tractor company to sue.”