“Did you lose your child?” asked a woman pushing a stroller in the opposite direction.
I glanced at Ben, who was already looking at me. Our child. Just the idea of it rendered me speechless for a moment. “No, my mother,” I finally said. “Seventy-two-year-old white woman, five four, blondish hair.” Probably wearing way too little clothing and possibly dazed and confused, I added mentally.
The woman made an apologetic face.
“Right,” I said. “That’s like one out of every twenty people who walks through here.”
“Don’t give up hope,” said Ben, looping his arm through mine, and I was almost able to forget the despair that was coming over me. “I think I see the bench—the one they always used to sit on.”
“What?” I said, but he was already pulling me in the direction of a cluster of trees at the edge of a wooded area. There, on the end of a bench that was just coming into focus, was a thin figure hunched over.
I broke into a run.
“Mom!” I yelled as I approached her. She was wearing a blouse and a pair of linen pants—both dirty now—and was slumped over a tattered cardboard box. My heart sank.
But she was speaking! “Laine?” she said faintly. “Is that you?”
“Mom,” I said, kneeling beside her. I wrapped my arms around her. “I’m so relieved. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she said, but she didn’t sound that way at all, and my relief was very quickly being replaced with a fresh wave of worry. “Just very tired.”
“What are you doing here?” I was trying not to look frantic, but her eyes were glassy and unfocused, and she didn’t look good. “Did you spend the night here?”
She nodded, and I took a deep breath. She’s alive, Laine. She’s going to be okay, even if it doesn’t feel like it.
“Here,” I said, handing her one of the water bottles we’d been carrying. “When’s the last time you had some water?”
“Oh . . . I’m not sure.”
Had she taken a sudden turn for the worse, or was this just the result of spending the night in the park? Either way, I realized, she needed to see a doctor.
“Sally,” said Ben. “How did you end up here?”
“Why, I went for a walk,” she said vaguely. “I wanted to remember some things, and sometimes walking helps.”
Ben and I exchanged a quick glance.
“Then I found a gaggle of kittens,” she said, motioning toward the box. “I had to find a place to put them. I thought . . .” Her voice trailed off.
I looked in the box beside her. Sure enough, the box held three tiny creatures—two long-haireds, one of them gray and one a brownish gray tabby, and another with black-and-white hair that was neither long nor short.
“Girls or boys—I can’t get close enough to tell,” she said as though she hadn’t heard me. “I heard them mewing for food. I’m hungry, too.”
“Here,” I said, grabbing one of the protein bars I’d packed in my bag. I was desperate to do something—anything—to help her, to make this better. To ease the guilt I felt over finding her this way and knowing I was responsible for it. “Eat.”
She took it from me, but she didn’t put it to her lips, and that’s when I really started to get concerned. “These poor kittens. They need their mother. I’ll need to get a dropper to feed them.” Then she looked up at me like I’d just arrived. “You’re here, Laine. You came back.”
“I did,” I said, and my voice caught.
“Oh, good. You’ll take care of the kittens for me, won’t you? I know you’re a dog person. But these little things need help, and you’ll make such a wonderful mother.”
I wanted to cry. I would, but she was the one who needed mothering right now.
“Does that mean you’ll stay?” Then she looked at Ben. “Where’s Reggie?”
“He’s in Jersey, Sally,” he said calmly. Then he turned to me and said in a low voice, “Laine, we need to get your mom to a hospital. Now.”
“No hospital,” she croaked, waving a skeletal arm in protest. “They’ll lock me up with the old people. Please, Laine, you can’t. Look what happened to Nana Meyers,” said my mother. She was starting to slump over. “They’ll never let me leave. I’ll lose my mind.”
It was entirely possible that a trip to the ER would fast-track her into a nursing home. And for all my guilt, I suddenly understood that my being here in New York—or not—was not going to be the deciding factor in what happened to her after this. Right now, she needed help. Help that I couldn’t give her.
I took a deep breath. “I’m sorry,” I said.
“For what?” she said, leaning on my arm. “You’re here.”
“Yes, I am,” I said, hugging her. Then I looked up at Ben. “Please hail a cab. We need to get Mom to the hospital.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
LAINE
Ben and I took my mother to an emergency room not far from the park. Of course, we couldn’t take the cats in, so he’d dropped us off after promising my mother he’d take the cats to a vet.
Our timing had been lucky, and my mother had been triaged right away, then put in a room and hooked up to an IV; the doctor who attended to her thought that her confusion stemmed at least partially from dehydration. This news alleviated much of the guilt I’d been having about taking her to the hospital against her wishes. Still, I had to wonder how many other decisions would put us at odds—and if she would concede quite so easily the next time.
My mother fell asleep the minute the last nurse left her room, and Hadley arrived soon after. I’m sure I wasn’t winning any beauty contests myself, but I couldn’t help but notice that the circles under her eyes were even darker than they’d been right after she had the twins. It reminded me of how much she’d been doing to help our mother through this—and that every second of that had taken away time she could have been spending with her family and on her business.
As I told Hadley, the doctor who’d been attending to our mother had ordered a series of tests, though not the MRI we suspected she needed; he’d asked us to schedule a separate appointment for that. She was set to be released the next morning.
“We’re going to need to figure out what to do with Mom long-term,” she said, her eyes flitting to our mother, who was snoring lightly.
“I know,” I said, trying to ignore the thudding in my chest. As even as what had happened began to sink in, my anxiety was spreading like an oil spill. How could I possibly help her the way that she needed?
“Hello,” said Josh, popping his head in the door.
“Hey,” I said, waving him in. In spite of everything—or maybe because of it—I was relieved to see him. He was a part of this family—and knowing that he was going to stay that way was a deep comfort to me.
My mother’s eyes flew open. “Come in, come in,” she called to Josh, as though she hadn’t been asleep at all. “I’m right as rain, you’ll see. Come in!”
I looked at Hadley, who shook her head with the same incredulity I was feeling.
“Mom,” said Josh, carefully kissing my mother’s cheek. “So glad you’re okay.” He’d picked up flowers—a white and pink bouquet that he’d put in a light blue mason jar from the apartment—and set them on the table at the end of the bed.
“No need to worry—I’m fine, just fine,” twittered my mother. “The flowers are lovely. Thank you, dear Josh.”
“Mom?” Piper came rushing in, with Kaia trailing behind her. “I dropped the boys off with their dads, but she wanted to stay,” she said to me and Hadley.
“Hi, sweetie,” I said to her. It was nearly nine at night, but you wouldn’t have known it watching her bounce around the room.
“Hi, Auntie!” said Kaia, who begun to clamber onto the bed.
“Kaia, get down!” said Piper, lifting her into the air and setting her down on the opposite side of the room. “We have to be careful with Grammy!”
“Don’t treat me like a vase,” said my mother.
Piper and I looked at each other quizzically, then at the bouquet that must have prompted my mother’s word salad.
Her face flushed, which told me she’d realized we’d noticed her confusion. “I just mean I’m not so easily broken,” she said quickly.
“We know, Mom,” said Hadley.