“Janie, seriously! Your mom is stumbling around your front yard yelling for you. Didn’t you tell her you were going to Fremont? She’s totally drunk, Janie—she’s wailing and—oh, shit. She’s in the road.” Click.
“Hey. I’m taking your mom to County Hospital. If she blows in Ethel, you are so dead. Call me.
Jesus. Also? Shit. My phone battery is dying, so maybe try the hospital or something . . . don’t know what to tell you. I’ll try you again when I have a chance.” Click.
“Oh, my God.” Janie stares at her phone, not really seeing it. Then she calls Carrie.
Gets Carrie’s voice mail. “Carrie! What happened? Call me. I’ve got my phone now. I’m so sorry.
I was—taking a nap.” It sounds hollow. Careless. Frivolous, even, when Janie says it aloud.
What was I thinking, leaving my mother alone for a week? “God. Just call me.”
Janie stands there, all the breath being sucked out of her, replaced by fear. What if something’s really wrong?
And then anger.
I will never have a life as long as that woman is alive, she thinks.
Squeezes her eyes shut and takes it back, immediately.
Can’t believe she would be such a horrible person, think such a horrible thing.
Charlie walks into the tiny cabin kitchen with a brown bag of groceries and stops short when he sees the look on Janie’s face. “Are you okay?” he asks.
Janie blinks, unsure. “No, I don’t think so,” she says quietly. “I think . . . I think I have to go.”
Charlie sets the groceries down hard on the counter. “Cabe!” he shouts through the screen door.
“Come ’ere.”
Janie sets her phone down and pulls her suitcase from the wardrobe. Starts throwing her clothes in her suitcase. She looks at her disheveled self in the mirror and rakes her fingers through her dark blond tangles. “Oh, my God,” she says to herself. “What the hell is wrong with my mother?”
And then it hits.
What if her mother really is dying? Or dead?
It’s both fascinating and horrifying. Janie imagines the scene.
“What is it?” Cabel says, coming into the cabin. “What’s going on?”
“Here,” she says. She dials voice mail and hands the phone to Cabel. “Listen to all the messages.”
As Cabel listens, Janie, in a daze, continues to pack.
After all her things are crammed inside, she realizes that she needs something to change intoshe can’t drive all the way to Fieldridge in her swimsuit.
She can’t drive at all.
Cue major detail.
“Fuck,” Janie mutters. She watches as Cabel listens to the messages. Watches his expression intensify.
“Holy shit,” he says. He looks at Janie. Takes her hand. “Holy shit, Janie. What can I do?”
Janie just buries her face in his neck. Trying not to think.
Endless.
7:03 p.m.
It’s a three-hour drive home. Cabel’s at the wheel of the Beemer that Captain Komisky lets him drive. A Grand Rapids radio station deejay cracks a lame joke and then plays Danny Reyes’s
“Bleecker Street” in his all-request hour, and Janie stares at her phone, willing Carrie to call. But it’s silent.
Janie calls the hospital. They have no record of a Dorothea Hannagan being admitted.
“Maybe she’s fine and they didn’t have to admit her,” Cabel says.
“Or maybe she’s in the morgue.”
“They’d have called you by now.”
Janie’s silent, trying to think of reasons why the hospital hasn’t called, much less Carrie with an update.
“We can call Captain,” Cabel says.
“What good will that do?”
“The police chief? She can get info from anybody she wants.”
“True. But . . .” Janie sighs. “I don’t . . . my mother . . . never mind. No. I don’t want to call
Captain.”
“Why? It would put your mind at ease.”
“Cabe . . .”
“Janie, seriously. You should call her—get the scoop. She’d totally do it for you if you’re worried about imposing.”
“No thanks.”
“You want me to call her?”
“No. Okay? I don’t want her to know.”