AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The patio umbrella in the centre of the table is closed, so I make quick work of opening it. When my left shoulder groans with the effort, I chomp down on my tongue to stifle my whimper as I finish and then sit on the chair beside her.
The open umbrella provides more than enough shade to keep Mom safe from the sun, and she sighs happily before taking a long sip of her drink.
“So, my sweet, sweet girl.” She sets her glass down and pins me with a knowing look. “How is your shoulder?”
I stiffen, subconsciously rolling said shoulder. “What do you mean?”
“Don’t play coy. I saw your pain just now.”
Like she had just reached over and shoved at it, a shallow pain trickles up my back, contracting around my left shoulder again.
“It’s fine. I hardly notice it.”
“Unless you’re doing something as simple as cranking open a patio umbrella?”
“Mom, please don’t start.”
She guffaws, “Oh heavens, Scarlett. You can’t expect me not to show concern for you. Especially when it’s my fault that you had to quit your physiotherapy.”
Tears fill her eyes, and I want to beg the earth to crack open and swallow me.
I reach across the table and cover her calloused fingers with mine. “I chose to come home, Mom. You didn’t make me do anything.”
What was the alternative? Fly back to Alberta and continue rehab with therapists who worked for a team we all knew I would never play for again while my ill mother was home alone, struggling with a new Alzheimer’s diagnosis?
Not likely.
“They were taking good care of you over there,” she states.
“It was time for me to come home.”
She shakes her head furiously, sending tears flying through the air. I flinch when she smacks the table hard enough to shake the pitcher of lemonade. “You’re stuck here because of me. I will never forgive myself for that.”
“Mom, look at me,” I beg, squeezing her hand tight. She does so reluctantly, her piercing green eyes the shade of freshly watered grass meeting my sky-blue-coloured ones. “There is no place I would rather be than right here. Look around us. This is the most beautiful place I have ever seen. And I’ve travelled the world.”
She blinks at me, squeezing my hand back before slipping her stare to the background. At the sight of her garden, she relaxes.
“I’m here because I want to be. Don’t even for a second think otherwise.”
“I’m sorry, darling. You know how I get.”
I nod and brush the bulging blue veins on the back of her hand with my thumb. “Tell me about what you did while I was on my run.”
Her eyes light up. “Oh! How could I forget? I have such exciting news.”
“Let’s hear it, then,” I encourage.
She leans forward and pulls her hand away from mine to clasp it with her other one before tucking them under her chin. I brace myself for the gossip that usually follows that move.
“So, when I was at Charlotte’s Flower Shop Saturday, I ran into this man and his son. And I mean really ran into them. My arms were full with my new fiddle-leaf fig—you know, the one in the corner of the den, by my reading chair.”
I nod, and she continues. “Anyhow, I hit that poor man right in the chest with it. I obviously started apologizing profusely, but he started laughing and took it from me. Oh, Scarlett. He and his son brought it to my car like true gentlemen.”
“That’s nice, Mom. But you should have asked an employee to help you in the first place.”
A call from the hospital informing me that my mother had gotten hurt while trying to carry a heavy plant out of a garden shop would have been a nightmare.
She slices a hand through the air. “Save the scolding for another time. I have more to say.”
