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She didn’t answer.
He hurried into her room and saw her lying on the bed. Her chest rose and fell at long intervals, but she was still alive. He’d been afraid for weeks that he’d come home and find her dead.
But her eyes opened as he stood in the doorway. She smiled at him and held out her hand. “Ethan. Come sit with me.”
He lowered himself onto the chair beside the bed. Hesitated, then reached for her hand. She hadn’t been a very good mother, but she’d done what she could and now she was dying. She’d been a single mother and had worked two jobs. She’d done her best, but he’d been on his own a lot. In her spare time, she drank her beloved Jack.
Now she was paying the price -- her Jack was killing her. Her formerly pale skin was dark brown from the bile in her blood. The whites of her eyes were yellow, and her abdomen was distended. All signs of liver failure.
She smiled at him. “Tell me all the interesting things that happened at the IGA today.”
“It was a typical day at the store,” he began. It was the way he started his report every day. Because nothing exciting ever happened at the IGA. “A kid tore open a box of Trix cereal and dumped it on the floor of the cereal aisle. Then he picked up the pieces and shoved them into his mouth.” Ethan smiled, remembering the mess and the mother’s theatrics. “His mother freaked out. Started screaming for someone to come clean it up. By the time I got it swept up, there were other kids eating the cereal. Lots of mothers yelling at their kids to stop.”
His mother managed a small smile. “I bet you calmed them all down,” she said. “You’ve got a nice way with people.”
He stared at her hands for a long moment. He wasn’t good with people, and both he and his mother knew that. But he appreciated her trying to make him feel better. “We got it all sorted out,” he said finally.
Slapping his hands on his thighs, he said, “What would you like for dinner, Ma?”
She drew a deep, shuddering breath. “I don’t have much of an appetite, Ethan.”
“Some ice cream?” he asked. His mother rarely refused ice cream.
She shook her head slowly. “Not tonight, honey. I think I’m going to sleep for a while.”
“Okay, Ma.” He stood up, gave her a quick kiss on her cheek, then said, “I’ll fix something for myself and eat in here with you.”
She managed a shaky smile. “That would be nice, Ethan.”
He returned to the kitchen and heated up a bowl of the chicken noodle soup he’d made for her a couple of days ago. He’d spent a lot of time chopping up all the vegetables she liked in her chicken soup, but she’d only eaten one small bowl of it. While it was heating, he made two slices of cheese toast to eat with it.
Ten minutes later, when everything was ready, he carried it into his mother’s room and set the plate and bowl on the TV tray beside his chair. She was asleep, her chest rising and falling slowly.
As he studied her, he thought she was breathing more slowly than usual. And as he ate, her breathing slowed even more.
Setting the soup bowl on the tray, he reached for her hand. Curled his fingers around her dry skin and held on. “I’m here, Ma,” he said.
She’d visited him every week when he was at Middleton. And when he was released, she’d moved them to this podunk town in central Illinois, where no one knew who they were. She’d even gotten him a job at the IGA where she worked. They’d lived here for eight years, and he spent most of his time working.
If his mother was dying, and he suspected she was, the least he could do was hold her hand.
Two hours later, she hadn’t taken a breath for fifteen minutes, and Ethan was pretty sure she was dead. So he called the EMTs, and they arrived five minutes later. They confirmed that she’d died and told him they’d take her to the hospital so a doctor could call the time of death.
Ethan nodded. He’d already made arrangements with the funeral home in town. He watched as the EMTs lifted his mother’s body onto a gurney, zipped her into the black body bag and wheeled her out of the house. Moments later, the ambulance engine growled as they drove away.
After the funeral was over, Ethan took a leave of absence from his job at the IGA to clean the house and put it back in order. He hadn’t spent much time cleaning after his mother got so sick. She hadn’t noticed, and he hadn’t had time to do it. But he was determined to set it right. Ma wouldn’t like the way the house looked now.
It was so quiet in the house. So lonely. He looked forward to going back to work, where he’d be around people. Once he got the house in order, he’d call his manager and tell her he wanted to come back to work.
As he went through his mother’s dresser and closet, getting ready to donate the clothes to Goodwill, the only sounds were the rustle of the clothes he folded and the scuff of his shoes on the floor. He wanted to yell, to scream, just to have some noise in the house. But that might alarm the neighbors, so he pressed his lips together and swallowed the scream.
After he’d finished the closet and dresser, he opened the top drawer of his mother’s nightstand. Buried beneath a pile of papers in the back of the drawer, he found a small box. Opening it, he sucked in a breath. Zoe’s bracelet.
He stared at it for a long time. Ma must have found the bracelet when he was in the psychiatric facility and hidden it away.
He ran his fingers over the charms, feeling their cool, smooth surfaces. Knowing that Zoe had touched this bracelet flooded him with warmth. After he’d been at Middleton for a while, his memories of her had faded. Now they came flooding back.
Was she still living in her house in suburban Chicago? He hurried to the computer in his room and turned it on. Searched for Peyton, but none of the families with that name were Zoe’s.
