The Beginning of After

dad.
    My phone beeped with a text from Joe:
    feelN btr, city 2mrw?
    It would have been impossible to communicate to Joe the complicated scenario of our trip. No words could do it, especially not in the form of a text message. I didn’t reply.
    “Did you see how Masher wanted to come with us this morning?” I asked Nana, loudly enough so that David, if he was actually awake and not faking sleep like I suspected, could hear. “He thought David was leaving again.”
    Nana just nodded, then said, “We should go out for an early lunch while David’s with his dad. What are you in the mood for?”
    I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw David open his eyes for just a moment.
    Etta was waiting for us in the lobby of the Palisades Oaks, a paperback romance in one hand. She burst into tears when David lumbered through the automatic sliding glass doors, then stumbled toward him and wrapped her arms tight around his bony, tense shoulders. I noticed how those shoulders stayed hard and unyielding even after she finally let him go.
    “Thank you,” she said to Nana and me. “Gabe’s really anxious to see him.”
    A pained look flashed across David’s face.
    “Laurel and I are going to have some lunch,” said Nana. “We’ll be back in an hour or so.”
    The grandmothers nodded to each other, and Nana put her hand on my back to usher me outside. On our way out, I turned and glanced back at David, who was watching me. I couldn’t fight the feeling that we were delivering him to an unhappy fate.
    “What happens next?” I asked Nana once we were seated at a Denny’s a half mile down the road. My cell phone had beeped again with another message from Joe, but I didn’t open it. It didn’t seem right to bring Joe into this day.
    “I don’t know, sweetie. That’s not up to us. And it doesn’t really affect us either.” She put on her glasses to look at the menu. “Unless, of course, David keeps dropping by like he did last night. Then I’ll have to make a lot more spaghetti.” She glanced sideways at me and winked, and I had to laugh a little.
    After we ordered, Nana took a sip of her tea, then put it down and looked at me.
    “Laurel, have you decided what to do about Yale?”
    She’d had this approach planned. We were in a situation where I couldn’t easily avoid the question.
    “No,” I answered, which was the simple truth.
    “When do you need to make up your mind?”
    “Not until May first. I’m going to wait until I hear from the other schools.”
    Nana nodded, and took another sip of tea. “I’m not going to push you, honey. I just want to know you’re thinking about it. It’s a big decision.”
    I looked at her, at the makeup that was already caking in the creases of her face even though it was only lunchtime. She seemed tired. Not physically so much as mentally, like she’d been doing way more thinking than she wanted to. I could relate to that.
    “I’ll make a deal with you,” I found myself saying, and she raised her eyebrows for me to continue. “I’ll think harder about Yale if you go on your trip back home in the next few weeks.”
    Now Nana frowned, but playfully. “That doesn’t seem fair. You know I was planning on going anyway.”
    “Yeah, but you would have found some excuse to postpone it again.”
    She looked hurt and exposed for a moment, her eyes wide and unblinking. But then she said, “You’re probably right.”
    “Nana, I’m okay to stay on my own. I want you to do what you need to do. Because you need to do it.”
    She just nodded, tearing up.
    “Besides, Meg can always stay over if I need her to. Or who knows, maybe David will still be our houseguest.”
    I said that part as casually as I could. I didn’t want her to think I wanted that, because I didn’t even know if I wanted that.
    Nana dabbed at her eyes with her napkin and said, “You like having him around.”
    I shrugged. “We have a lot in common. And he’s nice.”
    She looked like she was going to say something else, something horrifying along the lines of I hope there’s no hanky-panky going on! Or But what about your Joe? I silently pleaded with my grandmother not to go there.
    Fortunately, she didn’t. Instead she said, “Suzie called me before she went on vacation and said you don’t seem to be enjoying your sessions anymore.”
    Nana must have come to Denny’s with a list.
    “That implies I ever enjoyed them in the first place,” I said, stirring my diet soda with a straw so the ice