“Darling Jean, that’s what he called you, and every time he did it Tommy got madder than a wet hen. By then he’d grown quite testy with his daddy; if it wasn’t one thing, then it was another. Bill had a million lovable qualities, but Tommy apparently didn’t inherit a single one of them. Such a shame. If he’d have been more like his daddy, we would have all had a happier life.”
Hearing that, Suzanna felt Darla Jean’s anger rise up.
“Isn’t that the God’s honest truth!” she said, echoing Ida’s regret.
She never tired of listening to Ida’s stories, and it seemed Ida never tired of telling them. Later that day when she told of how William had dearly loved her Bananas Foster, Suzanna suggested they make a batch right then and there.
“Granddaddy would have loved this,” she said, sensing the presence of her legendary grandfather as she set the dishes on the table.
Afterward, as they sat licking the last of the buttery rum sauce from their spoons, Ida looked across at Suzanna and Annie.
“This was a wonderful idea,” she said and smiled. “Having you girls here is like having a piece of your granddaddy to hold onto.”
With each story, each hug, each shared cup of coffee, Suzanna grew fonder of Ida. Late at night, when the house was quiet and everyone else asleep, she would lie awake, reliving the stories of that day, imagining herself growing up in that house, loved and respected, the kind of girl Bobby Doherty would have married. The kind of girl who would never in a thousand years have moved in with a man like Earl Fagan.
In those few short months, a new kind of happiness crept into the house. Rooms that had been darkened for nearly a year suddenly had the windows flung open and were flooded with sunlight, and the stillness that followed William’s death was replaced by the sound of barks and giggles as Annie and Scout ran from room to room. Suzanna began singing as she went about her tasks, and instead of fretting about the closets that needed to be emptied out or the baseboard that needed repairs Ida sewed doll clothes. She also made Annie a gingham apron with her initial appliqued on the pocket.
“Now you can help me make cookies,” she said, and that’s what they did.
Working side by side, the two of them mixed, measured, and baked a fresh batch of cookies every day. At first Suzanna thought such an overabundance of sweets would spoil Annie’s appetite, but it never happened. At suppertime, she cleaned her plate. Before long her bony little arms and legs grew plumper, and her cheeks took on a rosy glow.
That summer as Annie ran barefoot across the back yard, ducking in and out of the sprinklers and chasing after Scout, Suzanna sat in the lounge chair listening to Ida’s stories and feeling happier than she could have ever imagined possible.
In the first week of September, after Ida set a pot of yellow chrysanthemums on the front porch and a handful of leaves had begun changing color, Annie asked if she could take Scout for his evening walk.
“That would lovely,” Ida said, “but put your shoes on first so your feet don’t get scraped on the cement.”
Annie wrinkled her nose. “Do I have to? They hurt.”
“What hurts? Your shoes?”
Annie nodded. “They squish my toes, see?” She pointed to a red spot on her big toe.
Ida laughed. “Well, seeing as how you’ve grown, I’d say it’s time for some new shoes. You’ll need them before school starts.”
At the mention of school, Suzanna felt a twinge of apprehension slither down her spine, but before she had time to give it much consideration Ida suggested they get Annie registered the next morning.
“We’ll stop by the school then drive over to Main Street to shop. She could use a few new dresses and some sturdy shoes.” Raising her hand with the palm facing Suzanna, she warned, “Before you say anything, I want you to know this is my treat. A grandmother is entitled to spoil her great-granddaughter if she wants.”
Suzanna started to protest, but her heart wasn’t in it. She was picturing the birth certificate still stuffed in the side pocket of the suitcase: “Annie Duff” written in the scrawled hand of Dr. Melrose. Duff. She’d hoped to never see the name again, but she’d forgotten about the birth certificate.
Early on, when she was still Suzanna, she’d plotted and schemed, sweeping away any last remaining traces of the name Duff. She’d made Annie a Parker, merged Tommy and her daddy into the same ill-tempered person, and etched the word “grandma” on the inside of her heart, but she’d neglected this one thing.
Now, Suzanna couldn’t dismiss the thought of what was to come. No matter how hard she tried to ignore the problem, her thoughts kept jumping back to that first day when Ida told Annie, We’re Parkers, all three of us. Family. But Annie wasn’t a Parker, and neither was she.
Not a Parker.
Not even a Parker whose name had been changed by marriage. She was a fraud, a phony, a con artist about to be found out. Before she tucked Annie into bed, the happiness she’d felt for weeks was gone. Her heart was heavy as a sack of stones and devoid of hope.
That night Suzanna pulled her suitcase from beneath the bed and took out Annie’s birth certificate, hoping against hope that the ink was blurred or the paper too worn to be legible, but neither was true. Sitting at the tiny desk in her room, she held the paper one way and then the other, squinting at it, trying to see if there wasn’t some way the name Duff could be mistaken for Parker. Minutes ticked by and as she came to realize the impossibility of it, her eyes filled and streams of tears
