Nothing good happened at 1:47 a.m.
I answered, trying to sound calm. “Ashley?”
She spoke quickly. “Don’t panic or anything, because she’s okay now, but…” I heard her take a deep breath. “Mom’s in the hospital again...”
“What? What happened? Is she?—”
That drop in my stomach, the cold rush of dread—I knew it too well. It didn’t matter that this call came in the middle of the night and the call about Dad had been in broad daylight. The panic felt the same.
“She’s fine,” Ashley interrupted. “But she tried going to the bathroom without her walker, which she wasn’t supposed to do. Looney, she fell. Thank God she was wearing her Life Alert pendant,” Ashley continued, her voice a little shaky now. “I can’t imagine what she’d have done if Beckett and I hadn’t bought it last month. She pressed it right away, and the paramedics were there in, like, fifteen minutes.”
Images flashed through my mind, uninvited: red and blue lights in her driveway. Mom lying on the bathroom floor, trying to wave the EMTs off because she didn’t want the neighbors knowing her business. I choked back a laugh—or maybe a sob—because it would be just like her to be more worried about what the neighbors thought than her own health.
My mom was like that. A little fussy—a lot fussy. Rigid. Bossy. The opposite of her own mother, Gran. And the opposite of me.
Growing up in the shadow of her constant disapproval had made our relationship…difficult.
Still, the thought of her lying there, hurt and alone, waiting for help…
“Did they take her to Providence?” I asked, standing and grabbing my sweatshirt off the chair. I really should have taken that shower Ashley suggested earlier.
“No, Boston General.” My sister sighed. “The doctor here says she hasn’t rebroken anything. But she did damage some ligaments, which will set back her recovery. Bex and I just got here.”
“Where are the twins?” I asked, immediately.
“Susan and Bob came right over,” Ashley said. Beckett’s parents lived less than a mile away. Of course, they’d help in an emergency. They always did. “Thank God, because I didn’t want to have to bring them here this late.”
Her voice tightened at the end, and I could hear the night’s stress catching up to her.
My sister and her husband had bought a house in the same neighborhood where we’d grown up, and where mom still lived, in the small town of Walpole, just south of Boston.
She had married her high-school sweetheart and never really left.
It meant family dinners were easy, holidays predictable. But now it meant that whenever something went wrong, it was Ashley who got the midnight calls, who rushed over, who handled everything.
It wasn’t fair. I knew it wasn’t fair.
Because I’d left.
“I’m on my way,” I said, pulling on my leather sandals. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“No, Loon, wait.” Ashley’s voice stopped me mid-step. “You don’t need to come tonight. By the time you get here, Mom will be asleep. They’ve given her pain meds, and she’s not going anywhere for a few days.”
I dropped onto the bed again, experiencing that same feeling I’d had when I’d gone to the station to clear out my office.
Like I didn’t belong.
Maybe Mom wouldn’t want me there.
I hesitated. “Ash… You shouldn’t have to handle everything. And I don’t want Mom to think I don’t care…”
“She won’t. Honestly. Bex and I have things under control.” But then the tone of her voice changed. “The thing is…about the trip… I just wish… I need you to?—”
Not this again? “There has to be someone else who can go,” I said. “Heck, Mom has more friends than I do. Can’t one of them take her place on the tour?”
“Not last minute like this. And Mom keeps mentioning it. It’s really bothering her; I think it’s part of what’s making her so restless. I mean, you know how she is.”
Holy souffle! Ashley was really laying it on thick, but yeah, I did, in fact, know how Mom was.
