There Was an Old Woman

Chapter Thirty-four


When the alarm went off that morning, Evie felt as if she were pushing herself up from beneath a pile of cinder blocks. The locksmith hadn’t arrived until after ten, and he hadn’t finished until nearly midnight, far too late for Evie to change her mind about where she was going to sleep. For hours she’d lain awake on the mattress on the living room floor, jumping at the slightest sound. No matter how many times she’d made a circuit of the house, demonstrating to herself that the doors and windows were secure, anxiety had returned the minute she lay down again.

On the way to work, she stopped at the bank. The minute she deposited the cash and checks, she felt as if some of the burden had lifted. But now, as she stood in front of a whiteboard in the Historical Society’s conference room and stared at a chart outlining everything that had to be done before Seared in Memory opened, the weight was back.

While she waited for her staff to arrive, she took a red marker and wrote E beside each of the tasks that were her responsibility. The workload, even spread over three weeks, was daunting. She’d never get it done if she had to be on watch for her mother.

“Hey, are you all right?” Nick’s voice startled her. She looked over as he entered the conference room. He held a cup of coffee out to her. “You look like you could use this.”

“Thanks,” Evie said, taking it. She did need coffee. She inhaled and took a sip. It had a hazelnut edge.

The other two members of her team filed into the conference room and took their places at the table—Maia, whom she’d hired last year, fresh out of graduate school, and Marie-Christine, who was a Barnard College intern. Now they were all looking at her.

“I’m sorry if I’ve seemed distracted. My mother is seriously ill,” Evie told them, starting the little speech she’d practiced on the ride in and trying to sound as businesslike and unemotional as possible. “I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen, but I might need to cut back on my hours. My sister and I are trying to take it one day at a time. With the opening so soon, I’d like us to put together a backup plan just in case.”

They had started to go through, figuring out which of them could take over which of her tasks, when Evie’s phone went off. The number on the readout was her mother’s neighborhood. The hospital? Evie’s stomach did a flip-flop. She excused herself and stepped out into the hall to take the call.

“Mrs. Ferrante?” The man’s voice was unfamiliar.

Evie swallowed. “This is her daughter.”

“Oh, right. This is Jack, from Egan’s Sunoco. We’ve got your mother’s Subaru up on the lift?” Evie sagged against the wall, relief sweeping through her. Of course. That’s who Finn must have called to tow the car, the gas station where her mother had always gone to have their car tuned. “We thought it would be an easy repair, but it turns out it’s not. The fuel tank needs to be replaced. The fuel pump and filler pipe, too.”

Fuel tank. Fuel pump. Filler pipe. Evie heard the words, but she wasn’t really processing them.

“The rest of the car looks fine. And with a little luck we can probably have it fixed for you in a day or two. But I didn’t want to start the work until I checked with you first. Run you about eight hundred.”

So much for an inexpensive repair. For a moment Evie felt paralyzed. Did it make sense to repair a car her mother would never drive again? Still, it had to be fixed or she and Ginger would never be able to sell it.

“Go ahead,” she told him as she imagined a flock of her mother’s hundred-dollar bills sprouting wings and flying out the window.

When she returned to the conference room, she was confronted with the worried faces of her staff. No, she told them, the call wasn’t the hospital.

When her phone rang an hour later, it was. Her mother had lost consciousness while she was undergoing a brain scan. She was in intensive care.