“Okay,” she said. For the rest of her life she would remember the phone’s tangled, knotted, sticky cord and the bright red tile backsplash.
Her grandmother continued, “They’re all gone. They’re all gone.”
“Who?”
“Your mom and dad. The girls. The little girls.”
“Grandma?” Was this really her? Was this a sick joke? Her calling them ‘the little girls’ made it all too real. Abby was five years older than Kaitlin and six years older than Maddie. This made them ‘the little girls’ to her grandmother, despite that they were both taller than her.
“Abby, do you understand?” Her voice was cracking, breaking.
“I don’t know.”
“Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Yes,” she said, and then she felt guilty for making this moment so hard for her grandmother. She was still pretty sure this was all a mistake. “What happened?”
“A semi-truck ran into their van.”
“Are you sure it was their van?”
“Yes. It went over the van and took off the top of it. All four of them are gone.” Then she added something else that Abby took to be, “They didn’t suffer.”
Abby leaned against the wall. She didn’t know what to say.
“I think I’m going to have a heart attack,” said her grandmother.
“Is anyone with you?”
“No.”
Abby decided then that everything her grandmother was saying was a sign of some kind of psychotic episode. “Grandma, please call someone. A neighbor or someone. You shouldn’t be alone right now.”
“We have customers waiting,” said the manager. Troy. What a fucker.
“Abby, do you understand what I told you? They’re gone. They’re gone, Honey.”
Abby cupped her hand around the receiver, trying to talk to her grandmother privately. In her purse in the break room she had a cellphone. If only she’d had it on her, like her co-workers who kept theirs in their pockets, texting constantly behind Troy’s back. But as it was, she was connected to the wall with a cord, a public hostage in the worst moment of her life. Later she would see a missed call from when her grandmother had called her cellphone first. It seemed to her that she’d always been behind with things that were basic and normal for everyone else her age.
“How do you know this? Who told you this?” Abby asked her grandmother.
“The police called me.”
“How did they know to call you?”
“Your mother had just picked up the mail. It was in the van.”
“Oh.” This made sense. It was the day before Abby’s mother’s birthday, and naturally her own mother-in-law had sent her a card. “Where were they going?” Abby asked, looking for the detail that would make thi
s all someone else’s tragedy.
“I don’t know.”
“Are you sure it was all of them? Are you sure there’s not some mistake? Have you tried to call them at home? Have you tried all their cellphones?” she asked.
“I already tried that,” her grandmother said. She broke down into sobs.
“What’s going on?” Troy said, coming over and getting in Abby’s face.