“Laine, hi! Did you find your mother?” she immediately asked.
“We did, but not until after she’d spent the night in a park,” I said, cringing; even after a decent night’s sleep, finding her there was entirely too fresh in my mind. “She was dehydrated, but no worse for the wear.”
“Thank God.”
“You can say that again. But . . .” I bit my bottom lip. “I’ll probably be here for a couple months getting this sorted out. I’m really sorry, Melinda.”
I steadied myself and prepared for her to tell me off. Instead, she said, “Laine, family first—always! Thank goodness you had the good sense to start with all the rooms we use the most. The kitchen looks ah-mazing, and my closet has never been better! Honestly, the mudroom and the game room can wait until you get back. There’s absolutely no rush.”
I was about to tell her that I probably wasn’t going to come back, but something stopped me. “Thank you so much for understanding.”
“Of course. I went through this with my mother, you know.”
“Really?” I was pretty sure Melinda was younger than I was.
“Yeah, a couple of years ago—she had early-onset dementia. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever been through. Harder than her death, in a way. I know that sounds terrible, but it’s true.”
I thought of my mother sleeping in the other room and prayed I wouldn’t be able to make that comparison anytime soon. “How did you help her through it?”
“Oof—not very gracefully. She wanted to live on her own, and we let her for way too long. She kept getting in her car and driving all over God’s green earth. After a police officer pulled her over in the middle of Ohio and she had no idea where she was or how she got there, we had to make the call to put her in a home.”
“That sounds pretty awful,” I admitted. As far as my mother had gotten on foot, it would’ve been worse if she had a driver’s license. Fortunately, she’d never had any interest in driving, and though my parents had a car for a while, they’d mostly relied on public transportation.
“It was terrible. But Ravi was my rock throughout the whole ordeal. If there’s one thing that I learned through all of that, it’s that you can’t go it alone. Maybe Josh isn’t the best person to support you right now, but do you have anyone else you can lean on?”
I had my sisters, of course. But Ben was the first person who popped into my head.
“Yeah,” I said. “I do.”
“Good,” she said, and even through the phone, I could hear the warmth in her voice. “Hey, listen. After you get back and things calm down for your family, maybe you and I can grab a glass of wine or something?”
Rationally, I knew that would be a long time from now, if ever. And yet I still smiled and said, “I’d like that.”
Josh had let Hadley in while I was still on the phone with Melinda. After I hung up, I found her in my mother’s bedroom. My mother was awake again and attempting to prop herself up on her elbows.
“You sure you’re okay, Mom?” asked Hadley, hovering so close you’d think that she was preparing to catch her if she fell out of bed. “You can rest, you know.”
“I’m fine, dear. Better than fine!” said my mother. “You girls worry too much. I’m going to get bored out of my gourd lying here.”
Josh had moved the small television in the living room to my mother’s bedroom, and Hadley pressed the remote into her hands. My mother looked at it, wrinkled her nose, then tossed it near her feet. “I never watch TV in here. You know that, Hadley.”
“Sure, but now might be the time to start. Or you can read or call a friend,” said Hadley, gesturing to my mother’s cell phone, which was beside the bed. I wasn’t sure when, exactly, but Hadley had attached a cord to it so my mother could wear it around her neck when she was up and about. On the one hand, it seemed kind of infantilizing. On the other, my mother had come awfully close to having her face plastered on a milk carton. And if she’d had her phone on her when she wandered off, it’s possible she wouldn’t have spent the night in Prospect Park.
“Bring me one of those kittens, won’t you, Laine?” said my mother, peering past me.
Ben had dropped the cats off that morning. I’d wanted to invite him in, but Josh had been with me, and realizing that made me uncomfortable was another reminder that the feelings I’d once had for Ben were resurfacing. And yet again, they came with a massive dose of caution. Because now I knew that our getting involved could definitely lead to the very thing I was afraid of: losing him.
“You’re not supposed to touch them until they’ve had their vaccines,” I reminded her. “Ben and I are taking them to the vet tomorrow afternoon. Then you’ll get to cuddle them all you want.”
“But I’ve already touched them!” she protested. “That’s why I stayed in the park. I was trying to keep them warm.” This had been her story since she’d regained lucidity. It wasn’t her memory that was the issue, she insisted. It was just that the animal lover in her couldn’t abandon a bunch of kittens, and she didn’t think that she could carry the whole box back. Never mind that she couldn’t tell us why she’d wandered off without her phone or purse and ended up in the park in the first place.
I pretended not to see Hadley shaking her head. “All right,” I said, reaching into the large cardboard box on the other side of her room to retrieve one of the cats.
“Oh, hello there, little mew,” said my mother as she took the kitten from me. It was one of the longer-haired ones, a tabby with extra toes that made its feet look like furry paddles. Why would a person opt for such a strange creature when they could have a dog?
My mother turned to me. “Maybe this one, Laine? What do you think? Is he a keeper?”
As if my opinion mattered here. But then I realized she was asking because she thought I was going to move in. “Mom, you know I’m not a fan of cats,” I said.
“You’re never too old to change, love,” she said, putting the cat up to her face. It batted an oversized paw at her cheek, but she just laughed.
“You’re really going to keep it,” said Hadley, watching our mother play with the cat.
“I have no idea—but look at how happy she makes Mom,” I noted.
“Right, but who will care for the cat?”
“Why, I will, of course,” said our mother.
“Yes, but who will watch her?” Hadley whispered in my ear. More loudly, she said, “It’s all fun and games until the thing gets crushed by a pile of boxes,” and glanced pointedly at the stack I’d put in the corner of the bedroom. Before I’d taken off for Michigan, I’d begun the laborious process of trying to return some of my mother’s impulse purchases. I planned to try to sell what couldn’t be returned—but judging by how long it took me just to get through three orders, that was a ways off.
“We managed to make it out alive,” I told her.
“This is as good a place as any for a kitten!” said my mother. “You know, Laine, I’d be even happier with all three. You could take your little mew here up to your apartment, and I’ll keep the other two here.”