Free A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler Page B

any clothing he found into the backpacks, taking no particular notice of what belonged to which child. Then, with the backpacks slung over one shoulder, he stepped into the hall again. He called, “Mom?”
    He looked into his parents’ bedroom. No Abby. The bed was neatly made and the bathroom door stood open, as did the doors ofall the rooms lining the U-shaped hall—Denny’s old room, which now served as Abby’s study, and the children’s bathroom and the room that used to be his. He hoisted the backpacks higher on his shoulder and went downstairs.
    In the sunroom, he told the boys, “Okay, guys, get a move on. You need to find your jackets. Sammy, where are your shoes?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Well, look for them,” he said.
    He went back to the kitchen. Red was standing at the counter, pouring another cup of coffee. “We’re off, Dad,” Stem told him. His father gave no sign he had heard him. “Dad?” Stem said.
    Red turned.
    “We’re leaving now,” Stem said.
    “Oh! Well, tell Nora Happy New Year.”
    “And you thank Mom for us, okay? Do you think she’s running an errand?”
    “Married?”
    “
Errand
. Could she be out running an errand?”
    “Oh, no. She doesn’t drive anymore.”
    “She doesn’t?” Stem stared at him. “But she was driving just last week,” he said.
    “No, she wasn’t.”
    “She drove Petey to his play date.”
    “That was a month ago, at least. Now she doesn’t drive anymore.”
    “Why not?” Stem asked.
    Red shrugged.
    “Did something happen?”
    “I think something happened,” Red said.
    Stem set the boys’ backpacks on the breakfast table. “Like what?” he asked.
    “She wouldn’t say. Well, not like an accident or anything. The car looked fine. But she came home and said she’d given up driving.”
    “Came home from where?” Stem asked.
    “From driving Petey to his play date.”
    “Jeez,” Stem said.
    He and Red looked at each other for a moment.
    “I was thinking we ought to sell her car,” Red said, “but that would leave us with just my pickup. Besides, what if she changes her mind, you know?”
    “Better she
doesn’t
change her mind, if something happened,” Stem said.
    “Well, it’s not as if she’s old. Just seventy-two next week! How’s she going to get around all the rest of her life?”
    Stem crossed the kitchen and opened the door to the basement. It was obvious no one was down there—the lights were off—but still he called, “Mom?”
    Silence.
    He closed the door and headed back to the sunroom, with Red following close behind. “Guys,” Stem said. “I need to know where your grandma is.”
    The boys were just as he’d left them—sprawled around the Parcheesi board, jackets not on, Sammy still in his socks. They looked up at him blankly.
    “She was here when you came downstairs, right?” Stem asked. “She fixed you breakfast.”
    “We haven’t had any breakfast,” Tommy told him.
    “She didn’t fix you breakfast?”
    “She asked did we want cereal or toast and then she went away to the kitchen.”
    Sammy said, “I never, ever get the Froot Loops. There is only two in the pack and Petey and Tommy always get them.”
    “That’s because me and Tommy are the oldest,” Petey said.
    “It’s not fair, Daddy.”
    Stem turned to Red and found him staring at him intently, as if waiting for a translation. “She wasn’t here for breakfast,” Stem told him.
    “Let’s check upstairs.”
    “I did check upstairs.”
    But they headed for the stairs anyway, like people hunting their keys in the same place over and over because they can’t believe that isn’t where they are. At the top of the stairs, they walked into the children’s bathroom—a chaotic scene of crumpled towels, toothpaste squiggles, plastic boats on their sides in the bottom of the tub. They walked out again and into Abby’s study. They found her sitting on the daybed, fully dressed and wearing an apron. She wasn’t visible from the hall,