I’m making my way down the shadowed hallway back to the dining room when I hear Grandma Eloise.
“... really time you and Randall looked again. My friend Sasha says her nephew’s group home is perfect for his special needs?—”
I stop cold.
Group home?
Looked again?
My breath halts.
“Eloise. That’s enough.” Mom’s words are low but clipped.
Looked again??
“I just mean that you and Randall aren’t getting any younger, and with Margaret and Merrick moving to Denver, it’s just?—”
My heart nose-dives.
“Grandma!” The cry is Margaret’s. She sounds upset. I want to run to her, but I can’t.
I can’t move. The organ that’s supposed to stay in my chest starts racing from somewhere around my shoes.
She and Merrick…
Are moving to Denver?
My jaw feels tight and prickly. Like it’s being squeezed by a vice covered in straight pins.
My ears ring, and I hear newspaper tearing over and over again.
But it’s not newspaper.
It’s me. Breathing. Panting. Gasping for air.
“Mom? How does she even know that?” Margaret’s voice is tight with distress and accusation. “We haven’t even had a chance to tell Hattie.”
“Randall told me. As he should, I might add.” Grandma Eloise snips. “Of course, I won’t say anything to the child.”
“She’s not a child.” Margaret sounds like her jaw is clenched. Like mine. “Hattie’s twenty-three?—”
Someone scoffs. I know it’s Grandma. I wait for Mom to say something. To join Margaret in my defense, but she doesn’t.
It feels like the ground opens up beneath me.
To my right the door to the kitchen swings open.
“Pardon me, Miss.” A server, this time a woman about my age, breezes by me carrying a massive tray.
I press my back against the wall and fix my eyes on the porthole window in the kitchen door as it swings closed. Behind it, the restaurant kitchen heaves like a piano on a trampoline. Chefs in white and servers in black race around with towering trays and searing pans.
I don’t understand how none of them are looking for a place to hide.
Then again, through the porthole window, I don’t see anywhere one could.
And then a door on the far wall opens, and sunlight streams in.
A rear exit. An escape hatch.
