Those Who Save Us by Jenna Blum Page B

aside. Passion’s Promise, it is called.
    How’s our girl?
    Better than I expected, says Trudy.
    Still sleeping?
    Yes.
    The nurse nods with satisfaction. She’s going to be just fine. Out of here in no time.
    How long will you keep her, do you think? Trudy asks.
    Oh, a couple of days at most. No more than that.
    Trudy runs a hand through her hair. I see. I guess I’ll have to make some immediate arrangements, then...Well, thank you for everything.
    The nurse watches Trudy curiously as she buttons her coat.
    Are you taking her to live with you then? she asks.
    This suggestion so shocks Trudy that she involuntarily snorts laughter through her nose. She rubs a knuckle across it, hoping the nurse has mistaken the sound for a sneeze.
    Oh, no, she replies. I don’t think she’s in good enough shape for that, do you?
    Well, the nurse says dubiously, she seems pretty strong. Some of these older farm ladies go on forever, you know. If it was up to me, I might—Trudy shakes her head.
    It’s out of the question, she says. I work full-time, I can’t look after her, and even if I had enough money to hire somebody—No. It’s impossible.
    The nurse shrugs and opens her book again.
    That’s too bad, she says. I suppose she’ll go to the Center then.
    Trudy grimaces beneath the scarf she is winding around her face. The penitential building next door is hardly the sort of place in which one would want to spend one’s golden years. But there is no use being softhearted about it. This is just the way things are. Trudy herself will end up in a similar institution one day. And now, for Anna, it is the only logical alternative.
    Yes, the Good Samaritan Center, she tells the nurse, her voice muffled by wool. In fact, whom should I speak to about getting her a room? Because when my mother’s ready to leave, I think it’ll be best to have her transferred directly there.

9
    AFTER THIS VISIT, TRUDY IS TOO WEARY TO FACE THE three-hour drive back to Minneapolis, with its attendant dangers of black ice and starving deer who wander onto the roadway. Besides, Trudy has more business in New Heidelburg; better to get it over with all at once instead of making another trip. Since the town offers nothing in the way of accommodation—it isn’t exactly a tourist attraction—she spends the night in one of the cheap motels on the outskirts of Rochester, in an overheated room that smells of smoke and dirty hair. She sleeps restlessly and rises early, and after a complimentary breakfast consisting of a roll and coffee so weak Trudy can see the bottom of the cup through the liquid, she returns to New Heidelburg, where she stops first at the nursing home to arrange for Anna’s room there. A single, of course; if Anna, that most private of women, were forced to endure a roommate on top of everything else, Trudy thinks, she would break her toothbrush glass and quietly eat the pieces.
    This unhappy but necessary task accomplished, Trudy proceeds to the next: dropping by the town’s real estate office to list the farmhouse for sale and its contents for auction. This transaction too is concluded with surprising ease, although the realtor wears on her sweater a Santa Claus pin with demonic, flashing red eyes, which both fascinates Trudy and stirs in her a vague anxiety.
    She finds herself back out on the street much earlier than expected, and since she has no reason to linger, she again takes her leave of the town, this time with a bewildering sense of anticlimax. Trudy frowns, puzzled. She should be relieved, even pleased; she will reach the university campus well before her office hours and afternoon seminar. Which is good, since after receiving the call about Anna yesterday she absconded from both without so much as a note for the History Department secretary. But as Trudy passes the Chat’N’Chew, the Starlite Supper Club, the Holgars’ dairy farm, the nagging feeling that she has forgotten something intensifies. The Lutheran cemetery where Jack