Silence. I flung the suitcase on my bed and headed back toward the kitchen, imagining Emily’s nonplussed response.
“She’s in Raleigh. North Carolina.” Mom’s hat sat on the counter. She was rubbing her temple. “We don’t know her name.”
“Can I talk to her, Mom?” I held my hand out for the phone.
Mom pursed her lips. “Here’s your mother. Now don’t upset her, she’s had a difficult afternoon.”
I took the phone. “Hi, Em.” Mom picked up her hat and wandered into her bedroom.
“What is Grand talking about?” Concern edged my daughter’s voice.
“Believe it or not, most of it’s true.” I told Emily the whole story.
“Wow.” Emily fell silent, as if taking it all in. She wasn’t speechless very often. “And you didn’t tell the sheriff’s deputy what the man said?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because . . . I don’t know. Your grandmother, mostly.”
“Mom, don’t you think they need to know?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know. It’s just . . .” How to explain? As much as Emily loved her grandmother, she didn’t live with the woman. In fact, she lived five hours away in Santa Barbara. She couldn’t know what it was like to try to keep peace at all costs—because it could so easily be broken. Besides, Morton had been so insistent. So desperate. The look on his face still rent my heart.
“Thing is, Em, he didn’t give us enough information to mean anything. By now they know more about him than we do. They have his driver’s license and address. They’ll be calling his family members. Maybe he’ll be able to speak to his family. They can help him deal with Raleigh.”
Even as the words left my mouth, something inside me twisted. Morton had asked me to do this. I’d said I would.
Well, that was ridiculous. I’d done what I could to help him. Now he was in the hands of the doctors.
“Yeah, I guess,” Emily said. “So you gonna watch the news tonight? See what you can find out?”
“Yes. And hopefully not see myself on TV.”
“That wouldn’t kill you, Mom.”
I shivered. “It might.”
The proverbial fifteen minutes of fame—that was for other people. I just wanted to live my life quietly. Go to work, and keep close to my mother and daughter. I’d lost my husband, Jeff, to brain cancer two years before. As soon as he died, Mom had started going downhill. Now I needed to take care of her.
There lay the irony. My life had been anything but quiet in the past few years.
In Mom’s bedroom, music kicked on.
“Uh-oh.” Emily laughed. “I hear Lady Gaga.”
Mom’s favorite. I sighed. “For the millionth time.” I crossed the kitchen and into the hallway to close Mom’s door. She was already swaying to the beat, one arm across her chest and the other held up and waving in the air. Her eyes were closed. She’d danced like that at Mallory’s in San Mateo every Friday and Saturday night for three years—a white-haired old woman in the middle of twenty- and thirty-year-olds. The regulars at the club got to know her so well, when she was sick and missed a night they’d call to check up on her. Then Mom started getting lost while driving. Her license had to be taken away, and she came to live with me.
Every once in awhile I took her to the club and let her stay awhile and dance. She was thrilled to go. I’d emerge with a terrible headache. But it was wonderful to see how happy everyone was to see her.
I retreated back into the kitchen. “How are you?” My beautiful golden-haired, blue-eyed daughter had dated a man for two years and thought they were on the way to marriage. Just two months ago she learned he was cheating on her and broke things off.
“Okay. Just taking it a day at a time, you know?”
“Yeah. I know.” I had to do the same thing when I lost Jeff. “And how’s your job?” Emily worked in a marketing firm. Most of her projects involved creating, editing, and posting advertising videos online.
“Fine. Still working on that big project. If I can dazzle our clients, it’ll earn me some great commission money.”
“Of course you’ll dazzle them. You’re a wizard with that stuff.” Not to mention Emily was aggressive. My daughter went after what she wanted.
“You’re biased.”
“You’re right.”
The music pounded. I rubbed my temple. How did my mother stand that noise?
“Tell me what you find out, okay?” Emily said. “About that man.”
“Okay.”
We hung up. I returned to my bedroom to unpack, my entire body begging for quiet. Not a chance.