Chapter 14 Mack #2
“Umm, yeah, if we have time.” Mack felt coldly ruthless toward Irene Weigand, if he was being honest with himself. It felt like she was punishing him for not being a mind reader, and he kind of hated her for it.
“Are the two of you close?”
“Not really. She just did me—did us—a huge kindness. I mean, beyond huge. Colossal.”
“Well, I’m sure she’ll want to work this out too, so let’s don’t go and panic. Let’s not make any rash decisions about your mother’s care just yet.”
Mack wondered whether Marilyn would still be saying this when there was a stack of unpaid bills in front of her.
Could Sandy Hollow just throw his mother out?
Call the state to come get her? Was he even legally responsible for Leonora?
Hailey would know. But hopefully—somehow—it wouldn’t come to that.
“I wonder,” Mack said carefully, “whether my mother may have received any correspondence from a company called Sunshine Enterprises?”
“I’m not sure.” Marilyn frowned. “What kind of company is it?”
How could Mack explain that he had no idea what kind of company Sunshine Enterprises was? Or whether it was a real company at all? But Marilyn didn’t wait for an answer.
“I don’t think your mom gets very much mail, Mr. Evans. She’s been here so very long, you know . . .”
“Right, of course,” Mack said. “And this trust that took care of my mom’s bills, did it have, like, an official name?”
“It’s in your mother’s name.” Marilyn got to her feet.
“And as I mentioned on the phone, I do have some paperwork that belongs to Leonora. I’ve taken the liberty of getting it out of storage, and I can give this to you to take now, if you want?
The files passed from her lawyer when he retired .
. . tax forms, I think mostly. I don’t recall any recent mail being in there, but you never know. ”
“Okay, sure.” Mack watched as she lugged a substantial cardboard box from the corner of the room.
He took it from her, and stood holding it while she went over some details of his mother’s care—medicines and trips to the specialist dentist and, Oh, Mrs. Evans also has her hair done by the visiting beautician twice a week, and Mrs. Weigand has offered to keep that up, so that’s good news, isn’t it?
Mack tried his best to look grateful.
“I’ll let you get back to your mom now, Mr. Evans,” Marilyn said finally, “and we’ll just stay in touch over the next few weeks.
Ah, and one last formality: I am required to tell you that your mother is categorized as an extremely vulnerable adult.
What that means is that we do need to have information about where she’s being transferred to, if you indeed decide that Mrs. Evans is going to leave us.
We need to make sure it’s an appropriate facility that can meet her care needs. ”
“Right.” Mack hugged the box of papers to his stomach; he looked and felt like he’d just been fired from something.
As he bade Marilyn goodbye and started down the empty hallway, Mack realized that he was being watched.
An elderly woman stood in one of the doorways he passed, and with surprising swiftness she stepped into the elevator with him just as the doors were closing.
As Mack pushed the button for his mother’s floor with his elbow, the old lady reached out and gripped his arm with such force that he almost dropped his box.
“Help me,” she begged, clutching at him with both hands. “They’re watching. Get me out of here.” Her cloudy eyes were full of desperation; her fingernails dug into his skin.
“I—” The box pitched sideways. He righted it with his knee and used the opposite hand to frantically push for the button to open the doors.
“You have to help me,” she said again. “I’m trapped, and they’re watching. I want to go home.”
Salt poured into Mack’s every wound. His heart fluttered, and his mind went utterly blank. All he could think about was the painful pressure being applied to his wrist by this small, wrinkled woman.
“Please,” he said to her. “Please, just hold on a sec, and we’ll call someone—” The elevator was moving.
“No! Don’t tell them! Just get me out of here!”
The doors pinged, then what felt like a thousand years passed while they shuddered open.
“Tilda!” yelled Mack, and the sight of the nurse’s puzzled face appearing from Leonora’s room was like the second coming to him. “Tilda, I think this lady needs some help.”
As Tilda took her arm—Ah, Miss Angela, on the move again, are we?—the old woman shook her head and bared her teeth at Mack. “You—”
He didn’t hear the rest because he fled to Leonora’s room and shut the door behind him. He stood by the side of his mother’s bed, next to his wife, and made no move to stop the tears running down his face. He was grateful when Hailey didn’t speak, and when she reached out for his hand.
“I had this crazy idea,” he finally managed.
“That we’d take Mom home with us today. Don’t laugh.
I mean, I didn’t really think that, but it crossed my mind in some way, you know?
Not being able to pay for this place seemed like a great excuse to just .
. . I’ve always wondered if I could just get her out of here and .
. . maybe, maybe take her out for a beer or something, or a drive, then she’d want to wake up and be alive again. Fuck!”
He saw Hailey jump as the huge sob escaped from him.
She dropped his hand, took a step back, and Mack felt like he might just burst apart.
But then Hailey’s arms were around his shoulders, and even though he was rocking back and forth and sobbing and shuddering like mad, she was so damn strong that he couldn’t break free of her. After a while, he stopped trying to.