“There’s a guaranteed home-cooked meal,” I added, hoping it would sweeten the deal.
She nodded to herself. “Yeah. Okay. Give me a half an hour.”
She hadn’t fought me. And that had surprised me too. But we weren’t leaving for a while anyway. “We’ll leave at five,” I said.
***
At Summer Shores, after checking our IDs, the security guard at the front waved us through the gate. The neighborhood was quiet, with lots of families and retirees. But it was in one of the nicest parts of town, one of the only places I trusted to be safe. No one was allowed past the front gate without a name on the daily visitor list. I had tried to surprise Mom once, and had to call her from the gate to confirm my permission to enter, even though the guard recognized me. It had only increased my appreciation for the community.
All of the houses had turf mixed with sparse desert landscaping. Mom’s house was a green one-story with white trim and a two-car garage, though she had only one car. Now that I was on my own and able to add money to her accounts on the sly, she was comfortable living by herself. She didn’t have to take care of her only son anymore, and rely on strange men to help us. A plastic yellow duck with flat wings flying in circles with the wind was the only decoration on her lawn. She had had it since we lived with my step-father years ago.
Hazel smoothed her clothes. A band t-shirt and jeans with her stark white hair, and those bright eyes. She looked nice. At least I could handle her in clothes.
Mom was going to flip her lid when she opened the door.
“She can be a bit much sometimes,” I warned.
Hazel furrowed her brows. “You think I can’t manage?”
I shrugged and knocked. Within seconds, the door was open. Mom greeted us. She was five feet tall with long graying hair that fell down her back, with one brown eye, and one cloudy eye.
“You’re here! You’re here!” she said, squeezing Hazel in a hug. “Now tell me, who are you, Hazel?” She held Hazel’s arm. “Grant didn’t tell me he had a girlfriend!”
“Friend,” I corrected.
“Roommate,” Hazel added.
“I’ll take it,” Mom said. “Come. Come in.” She took Hazel’s elbow and brought her to the round table in the kitchen, her limp barely noticeable today. “Tell me about yourself, Hazel. Grant said you were coming. How did you become Grant’s friend?”
“Roommate,” Hazel said again. I was almost grateful for that reinstated boundary. “It’s a long story.”
I fixed us drinks while Mom interviewed Hazel. Hazel kept up, answering the questions with a decent amount of honesty.
“So, is Grant still working out all hours of the day?”
“Uh, I think like an hour or more. But he does other stuff too. Like set up security cameras.”
“Ah, always the busy one,” Mom said.
I went to work checking to make sure everything worked, that there weren’t any repairs to fix while I was there. By the time I finished scanning the house, Mom had brought out a veggie pasta casserole and was dumping huge portions onto plates. Instead of grilling Hazel, she was telling stories about me. It wasn’t my intention for Hazel to have to deal with that, but I wanted her to see Mom. Mom’s spirit had survived, her body barely made it. For that, we had been lucky.
When we were done eating, I started washing the plates, and Mom shooed me out of the kitchen.
“Go on, now,” she said. She staggered to the door. Her limp was back now. She must have been hiding it from Hazel. “Take her out somewhere nice for dessert. I don’t have anything here.”
“I was thinking of taking her to Boulder,” I said. Mom tilted her head, a bleak expression on her face.
“All right, honey,” she said. She pat my shoulders. “You take care.” She bear-hugged Hazel.
In the car, I focused on the drive. A podcast played in the background, but I didn’t pay any attention to it. It was never easy to go back to Boulder Highway, where we had lived with my step-father. I gripped the wheel, careful not to let Hazel notice my emotions. Luckily, she was busy watching the lights flash by the windows.
“What happened to your mom?” she asked, still gazing out the glass. Something was on her mind. Good.
“What about her?” I asked, though I knew what she meant.
“The limp. Her eye. Did something bad happen?”
Bad was one way to describe it. But it wasn’t time to talk about that. I turned off the podcast. The casinos around us became dingy and faded. Being in this part of the city brought back memories that I kept buried for a reason. I turned down a street, coming up on a washed-up strip mall. Most of the building was vacant, except for a massage parlor at the end. An open sign lit the window, but the parlor itself was dark. I pulled around the side of the building and parked.
