Chapter 9
We shimmy into Mom’s hospital room, bookending either side of her bed.
“How are you feeling?” I ask when I take in her distressed expression. “Do you need more painkillers?”
“Abby, honey, can you ask the nurse if I can have something small to eat?” Mom asks.
Abby steps toward the doorway, casting a worried glance on her way out.
“They haven’t fed you?” Caleb asks, his face hardening.
“I couldn’t eat if they forced me,” Mom says. “I just wanted Abby out of the room. She doesn’t need to hear you two arguing about me any more than I do.”
Caleb and I share a look from across the bed, chastened.
“We weren’t—” I start.
Mom shushes me like I’m back in kindergarten. “What on earth are you two bickering about?”
Caleb speaks first. “The hospital wants you to have full-time care until you heal.”
Mom frowns. “The doctor said it may take three months. I can’t impose on anyone that long. That’s ridiculous.”
“You’ll need your wounds cleaned and dressed,” he says. “You’ll have meds to take. And it’s going to be a while before you can do things for yourself.”
“And I want to stay with you,” I say, beating Caleb to the headline.
“Oh, honey,” Mom says. “You can’t do that.” But there’s a subtle giddiness that betrays her refusal, a tug of a smile, a glimmer of hope that I might be sticking around. It makes me feel even guiltier for my long absence.
“That’s what I told her,” Caleb says. “I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“And I told him it’s the only plan that makes sense,” I say between gritted teeth.
“But what about the Red Cross? You can’t miss work that long,” Mom says.
“I haven’t worked for the Red Cross in a few years. I’m a consultant now. I can work from anywhere.”
“Oh.” Mom blinks, and I read a mix of relief that I can stay and shame that we know so little of each other. Abby bounds back in the room, her errand regrettably short. “And Jeff? You can’t live apart from your husband.” She pats my hand with her good arm.
When I freeze, Abby chimes in from the doorway. “They’re divorced, Grams.” She says it in a tone that accuses Mom of suffering from dementia.
I should defend Mom’s memory. I should confess that I never told her—about work or Jeff. But I can’t talk about it with Caleb’s hard stare on my face. And I can’t look directly at Mom as her pity makes landfall.
“I can do this, Mom, really. I want to.”
“But she doesn’t know your routines. She doesn’t know you,” Caleb says.
“Caleb,” Mom scolds, giving him a meaningful look. What it means, however, I don’t know. They have a shorthand I can’t read.
“I will learn.” I face off against Caleb over Mom’s hospital bed.
“You’ll have to stay the full three months,” he says, but this subtext I can read. Don’t let her down.
“I’m planning on it.” Three months is an eternity, but I will not let this man chase me away.
He taps his hand against his thigh. “I’ll come over every day to check on her.”
“I’ll appreciate the help.” See, I can be accommodating.
“Caleb,” Mom whispers her warning this time.
He lets out a long breath. “Fine.”
And for some reason, I feel like we need to shake on this agreement.
I extend my hand, and he takes it, absorbing my entire palm in his strong, calloused grip.
I mean to pull back quickly, but time is suspended.
Because this touch is . . . well . . . it is decadent.
It feels like that dream I have sometimes.
Where I’m onstage and begin a pirouette that doesn’t end.
As long as I spot my head at a point on the balcony, I can spin and spin and spin, staying in the euphoric revolution without care for physics or reality.
The handshake—if you can call it that—lasts too long. A minute. A day. An eternity. A perfect amount of time.
Mom tsks. “Don’t try to intimidate her with a death grip, Caleb. Stand down.”
Her voice snaps me out of my trance, and I pull away as the nurse walks back in.
“I’m sorry, folks, but visiting hours are over. She should be released at about eleven tomorrow if all goes well.”
We say our goodbyes and hurry out into the cool night air. Caleb insists on following me back to the inn because the road is dangerous and there is no cell service and he doesn’t want to be responsible if I become stranded on a one-lane road in the middle of the night.
I drown out the scents and scenery along the route by playing an audiobook I’ve listened to a dozen times—the twists already uncovered, the surprises safely revealed. There’s comfort in knowing how things end.
In the morning, I let myself into the tree house with the spare key under the mat and wait for Caleb to arrive with Mom. My resolve and bravery dissolve as I step over the threshold. Of all places to be stuck for months, this is the last one I’d choose.
I leave my small suitcase in the entryway. In it are two outfits, one pair of shoes, and a travel toothbrush. There’s no time to make the fourteen-hour round-trip trek to gather my stuff. Besides, I’m afraid that if I go home, I won’t have the courage to come back.
I step into the living room. Sonny’s instruments—acoustic and electric guitars, bass, ukulele, banjo, harmonicas, and bongo drums—are still near the fireplace.
At camp staff parties, he’d put on a show, using the raised hearth as a stage.
Mom would sing with him every year, even though I don’t ever remember her singing at home.
Sonny taught me to play guitar one summer, and I practiced until my fingertips bled. I remember wishing my ballet teachers could be more like him—patient, warm, praising.
Beside the fireplace are more portraits.
I stumble on one of a young man. He’s clean-shaven, baby-faced, staring straight ahead.
It’s the eyes—and that white scar across his full lip—that give him away.
Mom is a beautiful artist. Even in an abstract piece, she captures the soul in oil.
And something about this painting takes my breath away.
Young Caleb, bare of animosity and armor, looks fragile.
My phone jars me from my exploration. Cassie is calling, and I notice several missed texts from her over the last hour and realize what I’ve done. I forgot about our weekly Sunday brunch.
“Oh my God, Cass. I’m so sorry.”
“Are you okay?” Her voice is high pitched and panicked.
“Yes. I’m so sorry. I forgot to tell you I was out of town.”
“What? Where? For how long? I’ve been worried your car broke down.
Or you were dead in a ditch. Or you met some hottie and eloped in Vegas.
Or you got mugged. Or you ran away to join a commune in Portland to raise alpacas.
Or you got amnesia and forgot about me since .
. . You. Haven’t. Returned. My. Calls. All. Week.”
“Cass—”
“You haven’t talked to me since you ran out on brunch last week. I know you’re upset about your ex-dickhead, but I’m the person you’re supposed to talk to—”
“I’m at my mom’s.”
Cassie is never silent. She has an endless bank of words at the ready no matter the crisis. And it’s telling that she’s quiet now.
“Whoa,” she says after I’ve pulled the phone from my ear to ensure she’s still on the line. “That’s some breaking news.”
I catch her up in a breathless rush. The diagnosis.
The fall. The injuries. My impulsive offer to stay and help her recuperate.
Cassie listens without interruption. It is a novelty.
She waits until I breathe out a tired sigh before she asks follow-up questions: How severe were Mom’s injuries?
What’s the timeline for her recovery? What stage is her Parkinson’s?
How do I feel about being back? When she’s satisfied by my answers—as perfunctory as they are—she asks, “Now tell me more about the hot nephew.”
My skin flushes, and I turn to the open bedroom door as if someone could have heard her, which is ridiculous. I’m here alone, and she’s not on speaker.
But just in case, I whisper, “I did not say he was hot.”
“You didn’t have to. You used a dozen nicknames.
” She slips into a terrible impression of my voice—deeper and raspier than hers—so she sounds like an elderly smoker with a Jersey accent.
“Angry lumberjack with splinters in his ass, knight in rugged armor, heroic asshat, muscled jackass, bearded bastard, fuckable fuckface—”
“Hey, I did not say that last one.” Somehow, I’m laughing.
“Artistic license,” she says. “But I don’t think I’ve ever heard you mention a man so often in the span of ten minutes. And you were married to one for more than a decade. Ooh, boy.” Cassie whistles.
“Because he’s hell-bent on punishing me.” I know I sound petulant, but he makes me feel like a child—scolding me for my inability to deal with my shit and fix what broke between Mom and me.
“Have you been a bad, bad girl?” Cassie says in a sultry voice.
“Cassie,” I groan, but I know what she’s doing. She doesn’t let me wallow. Her hug is therapeutic, but her humor is salvation.
Before I can protest, I register the squeak of the front door. It’s too early for Caleb and Mom, so I peer down the hallway. “Cassie, gotta go. Someone’s here.”
“If it’s the nephew, snap a picture and send it to me. Love you to Neptune.”
“Love you to Pluto.”
I shove my phone in my pocket just as a woman appears in the entryway, carrying two multicolored canvas bags on each shoulder.
“Hello?” she singsongs. She sees me and rushes over, her floor-length tie-dyed skirt fluttering around her ankles. “Eden, I’m so glad you came. I bet Nicolette is thrilled to have you home.” She wraps me in a hug that smells of eucalyptus and vanilla.
It takes me a moment to reciprocate this stranger’s embrace, but she does a little swaying dance as she hugs me, which is infectious.
“Are you Adelaide?” I ask.
She pulls back and laughs. “Oh, yes. I’m so sorry. We spoke on the phone last week, remember?”
As if I’d forget the impetus for upending my life. “Of course. Thank you for calling me.”