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He listened to it once a year.
The anniversary of her death he split with Conrad. Cemetery, flowers, a call between midnight rotations. You good? Yeah. You? Yeah. They both ended up there at the exact time without telling each other.
You got through it. You ate dinner. You went to bed. You tried not to think about this day coming again next year, because each year you would remember her laugh a little less than the year before, and you were afraid that one year you wouldn't remember it at all.
Her birthday was for remembering her.
September eighth, and Susannah would have been fifty-seven. The number was there before he opened his eyes, before coffee, before his phone. She had been forty-seven when she died. His brain automated the age she would never reach with his first breath of the day.
The voicemail lived in a folder labeled "Saved." He had transferred it from phone to phone over the years, each upgrade requiring a careful export he didn't trust anyone else to do. Nineteen seconds.
Bash was on the couch with the iPad, running a low fever since yesterday. Aurora was napping. Denise's coffee mug was already washed, her keys gone from the hook, a Post-it by the sink that said love you. The house hadn't made a sound since she left.
Jeremiah sat at the kitchen table with his phone in his hand and his coffee going cold. Eleven minutes. He had glanced at his phone when he sat down and it had said 9:04 and now it said 9:15 and the coffee was still full.
He pressed play.
"Hi, sweetheart, it's Mom." A pause, the faint sound of a page turning. "I'm at the store and I can't remember if you like the Gruyère or the Comté for the gratin. I know Conrad likes the Comté but I think you told me last time the Gruyère was better. Call me back. I'm in the cheese aisle and the man behind me is getting impatient. I love you. Okay. Bye."
The Gruyère was better. He had told her during Thanksgiving prep two years before she died, standing next to her while she grated a block of Comté and he had said Mom, try the Gruyère next time, the nutty flavor's better with the potato and she had given him that look - eyebrows up, mouth pressed together, half proud and half what planet did you come from - because her teenage son was telling her how to make gratin.
He played it again.
"Hi, sweetheart, it's Mom."
Every message started that way. He used to tease her. Who else would it be, Mom? You think I have other moms calling me about cheese? She would laugh, that full Susannah laugh that took up rooms.
Aurora's white noise machine hummed from down the hall.
He put the phone down, picked up the coffee, and didn't drink it.
She would have been fifty-seven this year. She would have told everyone exactly who they should be dating whether they asked or not. She would have been in this kitchen right now, probably, sketching on the back of his grocery list because the light was good.
Aurora had Susannah's mouth. That wide shape that curved up at the edges even when she wasn't smiling. Denise had pointed it out first, scrolling through Susannah's photos, holding Aurora up next to a picture from the beach house. "Jere. Look." He saw it, and his mother's mouth was on his daughter's face, and he had to leave the room.
Bash had her hands - long fingers, marker-stained where hers had been paint-stained. He held pens like she did, thumb wrapped over the top, a grip that every teacher tried to correct and nobody succeeded at.
He picked up the phone and played it one more time.
I love you. Okay. Bye.
"Daddy?"
Bash was in the kitchen doorway in his pajamas, holding the iPad. His hair was flattened on one side from sleep.
"Hey, bud. You okay?"
"I heard a lady."
Jeremiah's hand closed over the phone. "What?"
"A lady talking. On your phone." Bash walked into the kitchen and climbed onto the chair across from him. "Who was it?"
"That was your grandmother," Jeremiah said.
He knew the word. He had seen the photos on the mantle, the painting in the living room. He knew her name. He did not know her voice.
"Grandma Susannah?"
"Yeah."
"Why is she on your phone?"
"She left me a message. A long time ago. Before you were born."
Bash chewed on that, brow furrowed. "What did she say?"
"She was asking me about cheese."
"Cheese?"
"She was at the store and she couldn't remember which kind I liked."
"Which kind do you like?"
"Gruyère."
"What's that?"
"Swiss cheese. Nutty. Good for cooking."
"Oh." He fidgeted with the iPad case. "Can I hear it?"
Four years old. Pajamas with dinosaurs on them. His mother's hands, wrapped around a tablet case covered in stickers.
"Yeah," he said. "You can hear it."
He set the phone between them and pressed play. Susannah's voice filled the kitchen. The cheese question. The impatient man. I love you. Okay. Bye.
Bash listened and didn't move. When it ended, he sat very still.
"She sounds nice," he said.
"She was."
"She sounds like Aunt Belly."
"Other way around. Aunt Belly sounds like her."
"Oh." He touched the phone, one finger, gentle. "Why was she asking about cheese?"
"She was making a gratin. It's a potato dish. You bake it with cheese and cream."
"Have I had it?"
"You've had mine. She used more cream. And she always burned the top a little on purpose because she liked it crispy."
"You burn stuff too."
"I don't burn stuff. I caramelize."
"Mommy says you burn stuff."
"Mommy is sometimes wrong about cooking." He leaned in. "Don't tell her I said that."
Bash grinned, and Jeremiah's hand tightened on the mug. His mother's hands were on that iPad. Her grandson was asking to hear her voice like it was normal.
"Can I hear it again?" Bash said.
"Sure."
He played it again. Bash leaned forward, elbows on the table, chin in his hands. When it finished he sat back, chin still in his hands.
"She says 'I love you' really fast."
"That's just how she was. She said it all the time. On the phone, leaving a room, making dinner. She couldn't not say it."
"You do that."
"You say it all the time too," Bash said. "You say it when you drop me off and when you pick me up and when I go to bed and when you're cooking."
"Is that too much?"
Bash shook his head. "No." He slid off the chair. "I'm going to watch my show now."
"Okay."
"Daddy?"
"Yeah."
"I like the Gruyère too."
He went back to the living room, the iPad under his arm. Jeremiah heard the show resume, tinny cartoon music through the tablet speaker.
He sat in the kitchen. The phone was on the table between the salt shaker and a crayon Bash had left there yesterday. His son had heard it, and the world had not ended, and Bash had asked to play it twice.
Bash liked the Gruyère.
He poured the cold coffee down the sink and started a new pot. Butter, cream, potatoes from the bin by the stove. No Gruyère - Comté, because Denise liked it and he kept it stocked. His mother would have used whatever she had.
When Denise came home at six, the kitchen smelled like cream and butter and the top of a gratin catching. Bash was at the table drawing dinosaurs on the back of a receipt. Aurora was in her high chair eating fistfuls of sweet potato with single-minded focus.
"You made gratin," Denise said from the doorway.
She set her bag down and all it took was one glance. She had been reading him like that since they moved in together - the cereal phase, the I'm-good phase, all of it.
"September eighth," she said.
"Yeah."
She put her hand on the back of his neck and kissed him once, brief, firm. "Gruyère or Comté?"
"Comté. We were out of Gruyère."
"We're never out of Gruyère. You buy it every week."
"I forgot this week."
"Bash heard the voicemail," he said.
"On purpose or by accident?"
"I was playing it. He walked in."
"How did he take it?"
"He said she sounded nice. And that she sounds like Belly." He paused. "And that I say 'I love you' too much."
"You don't say it too much."
"He said all the time."
She pulled a plate from the cabinet. "Did he ask questions?"
"About the cheese. About the gratin. About why she burned the top."
"And?"
"And I told him. And he said he likes Gruyère. And he went back to his show."
Denise held the plate for a moment. "That's a lot for a Tuesday."
"Yeah."
"Are you okay?"
He thought about it. The automatic I'm good was right there, and he skipped it. He thought about the voicemail and Bash's finger on the phone and the cheese aisle and his mother saying I love you before okay before bye.
"I'm okay," he said. "I made a gratin."
Denise set the table without asking what he had made. He served the gratin, golden brown on top, darker at the edges where the cheese had caught. Bash inhaled three servings and went for a fourth, fever and all. Aurora smeared sweet potato across her tray and shrieked once, for no reason, and then went back to eating.
After dinner and bath time, after Bash had bargained his two stories into three, Jeremiah stood in the hallway outside his son's door and listened.
Denise came up behind him and pressed her forehead between his shoulder blades, her hands settling on his hips.
"Jere."
"Yeah."
"I'll buy the Gruyère tomorrow."
"You don't have to."
"I know." She squeezed his hip once. "But next year I want the right cheese."
She was right there, her face lit by the nightlight from Bash's room.
"Next year," he said. "Gruyère."
"Gruyère."
The gratin pan was still on the stove, the browned edges he had scraped but not washed. His mother's cast iron. The phone was charging by the sink. Nineteen seconds.
I love you. Okay. Bye.