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It takes thirty minutes on the phone for Winfield to strong-arm Billy into accepting charity, and when he caves, he passes it off to August and tells her she’s in charge of figuring out food. Cut to: Jerry and August swearing up a storm, trying to average out the number of pancakes they need per person and how much it’ll cost. They get there, though.
All along, it hums under the surface—that feeling August felt when she stepped inside Delilah’s, when Miss Ivy calls her by name, when they paraded down to the Q behind Isaiah in his top hat, when the guy at the bodega doesn’t card her, when Jane looks at her like she could be part of her mental photo album of the city. That feeling that she lives here, like, really lives here. Her shadow’s passed through a thousand busted-up crosswalks and under a million creaking rows of scaffolding. She’s been here, and here, and here.
New York takes from her, sometimes. But she takes too. She takes its muggy air in fistfuls, and she packs it into the cracks in her heart.
And now, she’s gonna give it something. They’re gonna give it something.
It’s the end of the first week, a late night sitting around a pizza talking about flyers, when August’s phone rings.
She slides it out from under the box: her mom.
“Helloooo,” she answers.
A short pause—August sits up straight. Something’s up. Her mother never allows even half a second of silence.
“Hey, August, honey,” she says. “Are you alone?”
August climbs to her feet, shrugging at Myla’s concerned look. “Um, not right now. Hang on.” She crosses to her room and shuts the door behind her. “What happened? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” she says. “It’s your grandmother.”
August hisses out a long breath. Her grandmother? The old broad probably called her a test-tube science project baby again or decided to bankroll another Republican congressional campaign. That, she can deal with.
“Oh. What’s going on?”
“Well, she had a stroke last night, and she… she didn’t make it.”
August sits down heavily on the edge of her bed.
“Shit. Are you okay?”
“I’m all right,” her mom says in the tone she gets when she’s leafing through evidence, half-distracted and clipped. “She’d already made arrangements after your grandfather died, so it’s all handled.”
“I meant, like.” August tries to speak slowly, deliberately. Her mother has always been about as emotive as a mossy boulder, but August feels like this should probably be an exception. “Are you okay?”
“Oh, yeah, I’m—I’m okay. I mean, she and I had said everything we were ever going to say to each other. I got closure a long time ago. It is what it is, you know?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m really sorry, Mom. Is there anything I can do? Do you need me to come down for the funeral?”
“Oh, no, honey, don’t worry about that. I’ll be fine. But I did need to talk to you about something.”
“What’s up?”
“Well, I got a call from the family lawyer last night. Your grandmother left you some money.”
“What?” August blinks at the wall. “What do you mean? Why would she leave me something? I’m the shameful family secret.”
“No. No, that’s me. You’re her granddaughter.”
“Since when? She’s barely spoken to me. She’s never even sent me a birthday present.”
Another pause. “August, that’s not true.”
“What do you mean it’s not true? What are you talking about?”
“August, I… I need to tell you something. But I need you not to hate me.”
“What?”
