“Three months, give or take.”
“With pain?”
“No. The pain is less each day. I’m about done with those pills. Tylenol will do.”
“Can you get out? Go places?” I was thinking about church, and about all of those friends who might take her to lunch.
“I amnotgoing anywhere with that walker,” she declared. “As soon as I can, I’ll use a cane.”
“What’s happening with work?” I asked. It seemed a normal follow-up to using a cane. If The Buttered Scone was my mother’s baby, she would be in a rush to get back—unless what Annika said about her losing interest was true.
She shifted, then settled again. “Work is fine.” Lifting her fork, she resumed eating without looking at me. I wondered if Annika was right.
I glanced at the laptop. “Who’s been posting on Facebook?”
“Me. I only missed a day.”
“Who runs the bakery?”
“Annika Allen,” she said and reached for jam. “She’s very good.”
I waited for her to say something about Annika that might reveal either her knowledge of the Annika-Liam connection or of Annika having called me. When she did neither, I took the coward’s route and let it go.
“Is there anything you’re not allowed to do?” I asked.
“Run,” she said. Edward snickered. She shot him an uneasy glance before adding, “Lift anything more than five pounds.”
“Climb stairs?”
“I can if I want.”
“Do the stairs make you nervous?” They were the scene of the crime, so to speak.
“Some.” Her eyes rose, her voice vehement. “And don’t suggest a stair lift. I am notold, for Christ’s sake.”
Thattook me by surprise, not the stair-lift part but the swearing part. It wasn’t like Margaret to take the Lord’s name in vain. But she was glaring at me, daring me to argue. And she was, in fact, looking more, with each passing minute, like the mother I knew. So I held up a hand, shook my head, backed off.
“What about swimming?” asked Edward.
“They suggested that, but I don’t swim.”
“You used to,” I reminded her. “Way back. You used to do it every morning before work.”
“That pool closed. I’d have to go farther for an indoor one.”
I wasn’t mentioning Uber. “When can you drive?” Luckily, the broken bones were all on her left side, not her right.
She picked up a piece of toast. “Not soon enough.” She sighed. “The problem is reaction time. Surgery slows it down. If I drive too soon and cause an accident…” She pursed her lips and shook her head. Then, seeming to realize what she’d said, she dropped the toast and folded her arms.
I couldn’t have asked for a better lead-in. Curling my fingers around her thin wrist, I whispered, “I’m sorry, Mom. Sorry for everything that happened. Do you know how many times I’ve relived those minutes and done things differently in my mind—like stopping and flagging down the first car to come along, or turning around and going back—but I didn’t that day. I kept driving. Do you know howsorryI am?”
There were many things my mother could have said, but all she did was unfold her arms and wrap her hands around her tea.
“Mom?”
She sighed. “What can I say?”
“Something maybe about God forgiving our sins, or God having a plan?”
