Flummoxed, Vera hung up the phone. She didn’t know what to say. A brew of emotions filled her. Her mother must have cancelled the flight and returned home earlier. Vera’s hand balled into a fist and she reached for her bag before heading to the studio.
When Sheila walked into the dance studio, Vera was staring off into space.
“Hey!” she said. “You still with us?”
“Huh?” Vera said.
“What’s wrong with you?” Sheila said. “Thinking about that proposal again?”
“Concerned about Mama and Jon.” She ignored the proposal bit from Sheila. Honestly!
“I’ve been thinking . . . have you called the airline?”
“Annie called this morning and said passenger lists are private. Cops could get them, though,” Vera said. “But then I had this crazy idea and it worked.” She told Sheila what had happened.
“So evidently she cancelled her flight and came back to the States early,” Sheila said. “But where is she?”
“I don’t know,” Vera said, throwing aside her pencil. “She doesn’t have her cell phone with her and Jon never has his with him. Besides, their luggage is at home. Mama’s luggage is already home, on her bed, with her cell phone.”
“Why don’t we get Detective Bryant involved?” Sheila said after a few beats.
“You mean file a missing persons report?” Vera asked.
“That’s exactly what I mean,” Shelia said, crossing her arms.
“Oh, I don’t know. That’s serious stuff to get the police involved.”
“And why shouldn’t you?” Sheila said. “Your mom is going to be eighty-five years old and she’s missing.”
“If they found her and she was fine, she’d kill me,” Vera said, biting her lip.
Sheila grinned. “Might be worth it.”
“I might do it. I’ll give Bryant a call and see what he says.”
“Good idea. I’m off to the grocery store,” Sheila said.
As she left, she turned to look at Vera, edged between her desk and the computer, surrounded by papers. How many times had she seen her friend in this same tableau? The studio was decorated in pinks and browns and the walls were covered with posters of ballerinas. One of these days, Sheila vowed to make a scrapbook for Vera, the woman who had made countless scrapbooks for her ballet students over the years.
As she walked out on to the street, Sheila’s cell phone blared. “What?” she said, after seeing Steve’s name on the screen. She’d just left him, for God’s sake.
“Something is wrong with Donna,” he said.
“What? What do you mean?” she said, her skin vibrating.
“She won’t get up,” Steve said.
“She’s just tired,” Sheila said.
“I walked past her room and she’s wide awake, but staring into space . . . and there’s a foul odor coming from her room. I wanted to go in there, but I think she’s peed herself,” Steve said. “And she won’t—”
Sheila shoved her phone into her purse and ran home. What was happening to Donna?
She ran down the block past everything familiar—but it all looked so strange, so menacing. All of it stood between her and her daughter. She saw her house and it looked so far away. So far. Too far. She continued to run, past the neighbors, past the woman who said hello to her. Sheila passed her with a blur, but she didn’t care. She needed to get home to her daughter.
Home. There it was. She ran into her yard and up the porch steps and flung open the door. Steve stood there with his cell phone still in his hands, mouth open. She didn’t even bother to say hello; she ran up the stairs. Steve followed close behind.
And there was Donna, just as Steve had said. She looked vacant, like a shell—as if the spirit in her had fled.
“Donna?” Sheila said, putting her hand to her forehead. Why? What a stupid thing to do. A simple gesture. A gesture concerned mothers everywhere make. But this was no flu.
“Steve.” Sheila’s voice quivered. “Dial nine-one-one.”
Watching the medics work on her daughter, lifting her small body from her wet bed, felt surreal to Sheila. She had the presence of mind to answer all the questions they put to her. But later she couldn’t remember what her answers had been. As she stood by Donna’s hospital bed, looking over her daughter’s small body, she couldn’t help but remember the day she’d given birth to her, the way she’d felt the first time she held her. Please. I don’t want to lose her, she pled.
Steve wrapped his arm around her as they listened to the slow, steady rhythm of the breathing machine—a precaution, to make sure Donna’s brain was getting enough oxygen. She had been lucid for a minute and looked at Sheila with fear in her eyes. “Mom?” she had whispered, falling back asleep before Sheila could answer. That had been unsettling and hopeful at the same time. Fear, at least was something, some emotion. Dusty, Gerty, and Jonathon sat and stood quiet in the room, standing watch, worried, teary-eyed.
Finally the doctor walked in.
“It looks like Donna had an epileptic seizure,” he said.
“Epilepsy? Now?”
The doctor nodded. “It can set in anytime. Chances are she’s had mild seizures before and didn’t know it.”
“How could that be?” Steve asked.
“It’s the way epilepsy is sometimes, I’m sorry to say. But the good news is that she will recover from this and we’ll be able to medicate her to help ensure this won’t happen again.”
Sheila finally exhaled.
“It may take a few days for her to come around, but she will,” he said. “It would help if we knew what caused it. It often appears that there is no cause. But other times . . . I know you’ve answered this. But are you certain she’d not doing drugs?”
“As certain as we can be,” Steve said. “Given that she’s in college and not living at home.”
The doctor nodded. “I think this is a case of juvenile myoclonic epilepsy. Her EEG showed a generalized spike discharge. Sleep deprivation can cause it. Or alcohol withdrawals. Or any number of things.”
“She’s not been sleeping right,” Sheila said. “School has been a challenge for her.”
The doctor nodded as Vera nearly slid into the room.
“Sheila! Sheila! Oh God, what’s happened?” Vera cried, as Sheila fell into her arms.
Paige had just started teaching her second-period American History class when she received the text about Donna. She glanced at the clock—unfortunately it would have to wait until lunchtime. When lunch rolled around, she dialed Vera’s number because she didn’t want to disturb Sheila at the hospital.
“This number has been disconnected,” came the response. Paige looked at the screen of her phone and then at her the contacts. “Oh, bother,” she said to herself. She had pressed the wrong number for Vera—it was her landline. But why was the landline disconnected?
She dialed the right number this time.
“Hi, Paige,” Vera said into the phone after only one ring.
“What’s going on?”
Vera filled her in. “The doctors say she’s going to be fine,” she said and sighed in relief.
“Have you seen Eric while you’re there?” Paige asked.
“He’s been in and out,” Vera said. “Annie and DeeAnn have been here and gone already. I’ll have to leave soon to get Elizabeth.”
“I’ll stop by after work,” Paige said.
“See you,” Vera said and hung up.
“Wait—” Paige started to say, but Vera had already hung up. Paige shrugged. She’d find out later why Vera’s landline was disconnected. Paige and Earl had thought about disconnecting theirs because they rarely used it anymore, and she wondered if that’s what Vera and Bea had done.
Paige often ate her lunch in her car. It was quiet. She read or chatted on the phone with her friends. Sometimes she went out for lunch, but she almost never ate in the school building. She didn’t like most of her colleagues. At this point in her career, they were mostly younge
r than she and she found it difficult to relate to them. She wanted to retire, but the school kept asking her to stay.
As Paige reached for the handle of the car door to exit, her phone rang. Randy.
“Hey, Mom,” he said. “I’m doing a Skype interview with Pamela tomorrow.”
“Good luck,” she said.
“Are you sitting in the car?” he asked after a moment.
“Yep,” she said.
He laughed. “So antisocial. Anyway, I’m looking forward to chatting with her and seeing what exactly she has in mind.”
“Humph,” Paige said. She was distracted by the Donna thing.
“Are you okay?”
She told him what had happened with Donna. “It’s scary,” she said.
“The last time I heard about her she was doing so well,” he said.
“Yes, but she was working hard to keep that scholarship. Evidently, it was too much.”
“She was always very driven. I understand her wanting to do well.”
“They’re afraid she’ll lose that scholarship,” Paige said.
“Well, so what if she does? At least she will be healthy and happy and alive.”
Paige could not help but beam. How had she gotten such a smart and wise son? “But I remember culinary school,” she said in a teasing voice.
“I was afraid you’d bring that up,” Randy muttered. He had worked himself ragged, developing an ulcer when he was still in school. “In any case, my interview is tomorrow and I’ll let you know how it goes.”
“Okay, Randy. I’ll be waiting.” As she walked back into the school, she mused over the changes in her life. You never knew what direction your life would take you. A few years ago, she had been wounded by her son’s announcement that he was gay. The church that they’d belonged to had a firm stance on the issue. She and Earl had gotten married in that church and had attended faithfully. But the longer she’d been away from her son, the more apparent it had become that the church could not fill the void his absence created.
She started to listen to herself instead of the preacher, started talking with Earl about it, and eventually they’d left the church.
She could have never imagined that Randy would come back to Virginia. She was afraid to get too hopeful; it would be a dream come true to have her boy closer. Of course, now he was a twenty-eight-year-old man. She’d lost too much time with him already. She blinked back a tear, took a deep breath, and opened the car door.
Vera made arrangements for Elizabeth to stay with Annie so that she could stay with Sheila for a while at the hospital. When she returned to Beatrice’s house, Detective Bryant pulled up along the curb. Vera’s heart started to race. What was he doing here?
“Vera,” he called to her as she kept walking toward the door. She didn’t want to turn around. He was bad news. Maybe he was here to tell her that Beatrice’s body had been found over at the bottom of some cliff. She didn’t want to hear it so she kept walking and ignored him.
“Vera!” he called again.
She turned, reluctantly.
“Yes?”
“I understand you were looking for me today,” he said. “And I was in the neighborhood so I thought I’d stop by.”
“That’s right. I needed to talk with you about Mama.”
“Beatrice? Really?” the detective said, following her inside.
“It seems that my mother cut her trip to Paris short. She’s been seen around town and evidently has been home long enough to drop off her luggage and her cell phone.”
“And?”
She shrugged with her arms splayed out. “I haven’t seen her.”
His eyebrows lifted and his mouth went crooked. “Are you saying that she’s missing?”
Vera nodded. “I can’t find her or Jon. In fact, Jon’s sister called here looking for him. They must have left Paris days ago.”
His hands went to his hips and his shook his head.
“I noticed her car isn’t in the driveway,” he said.
“No. She drove it to the airport. So I assume she drove it back and then left again. But I’m worried. This isn’t like her. I’ve not heard a word from her,” she said.
“Beatrice can generally take of herself.”
“Yes, that would be the consensus,” she said, sitting down on the couch. “But she is almost eighty-five years old and Jon is in his seventies. Anything could have happened to them.”
Bryant sat down next to her. “You know, I forget about how old she is.” He seemed to be thinking. His hand scratched his stubbled chin. “Could there be a miscommunication somewhere?”
Junie Bee slinked into the room and hopped onto Bryant’s lap. “Cute cat,” he said.
Vera could not hold back a smile, watching the burly detective pet the cat and Junie Bee rub and purr against him, circling and then finally settling onto his lap.
“Um,” Bryant said. “Where were we?”
“Miscommunication,” Vera said, then yawned. It was so late and the stress of the day was getting to her. Her shoulders and back ached from those damned hospital chairs, but the good news was that Donna was awake and quite lucid, smart-mouthing the doctors, which gave them hope.
“Have you checked your cell phone?” he asked.
“Yes, but there’s not much point in that. Mama doesn’t know my cell number. I programmed it into her cell phone so she can just push one button. She has no idea what the number is.”
“What about the house phone?” he asked, looking around and then resting his eyes on the phone on the wall.
“If there was a message, the light would be blinking,” Vera said, and yawned again.
When Bryant stood up to take a closer look at the phone, the cat leapt from his lap. “Whoa,” he said, holding up a chewed wire. “Maybe she has been trying to reach you.”
Suddenly Vera was wide awake.
“You need to replace the cord—looks like something has chewed this,” he said, looking at the cat.
“Do you think that Junie Bee—” That damned cat!
He nodded. “No place open right now. Why don’t you let me bring you a cord in the morning? If there are no messages from your mom, we’ll work on finding her. Okay?”
Vera sank back into her chair and nodded. “I never thought to check the phone.”
“Hey,” he said in a lighthearted voice. “I’m a detective. This is what we do.” He grinned and held up the wire.
She laughed. Come to think of it, the last call she’d gotten was days ago from Evie, before she figured out that Beatrice was home. They must have been on their way home then.
“I’ll see myself out,” he said. “Just try to get some sleep. You look tired.”
She nodded. “Yep, I am. Good night.”
When he left, Junie Bee jumped into Vera’s lap and sat face-to-face with her, her amber eyes looking into Vera’s. Vera thought she detected a smugness to her—oh, that’s crazy. She’s just a cat. “I suppose you want food,” Vera said.
Junie Bee mewed and jumped off her lap.
Vera walked into the kitchen, switched the light on and picked the refrigerator magnets off the floor again. She held them up and said, “Stop doing this!” to the cat and stuck them back on the door. She reached into the cupboard and pulled out a can of cat food. She noticed some papers under the edge of the cans. She pulled them out and set them on the corner of the counter with the other papers she’d been picking up from the cat’s kitchen escapades.
She fed Junie Bee, noting to herself that she’d go through those papers in the morning.
She woke up at 3 AM thinking of Eric, and one thought came clearly to her mind: I can’t marry him—I love him too much.
But what if that meant losing him?
Vera rolled over and pulled her quilt closer around her. The damned cat was draped like a hot water bottle over her feet. She drifted back to sleep, with thoughts of Eric, Donna, and her mother, wondering if she wanted to find the old bat after she had pulled this on her.
The next morning, she had her breakfast and coffee and sat down to go through the papers on the counter. She was interrupted by Detective Bryant at the door.
“Come in,” she said. “Thanks so much for helping me out with this.”
As the detective readied the new phone cord, kneeling on to the floor, Vera sat back down and started to go through the stack of papers that had been knocked off the refrigerator. There were several of pieces of Elizabeth’s art, some schedules of activities, and a note from her mother. What? A note?
Dear Vera,
We are home and will call when we get to Rose’s house.
Love,
Mama
“What? When did she leave this?” Vera squealed so loudly that it startled Bryant. He stood so fast that he conked his head on the kitchen table. She held up the note to show him.
“What d’you think?” he said.
“The damned cat!” she hissed. “This note has been under the counter, along with a bunch of other papers the cat had pulled down from the fridge. She just won’t leave things alone.”
As if she’d heard the word cat, Junie Bee entered the room, strutting around, trying to get the detective’s attention. She had quite a little kitty crush on Bryant.
Vera dialed her Aunt Rose’s number on her cell phone as the detective chortled and worked on the phone.
“About damned time,” Rose answered by way of greeting.
“What?” Vera said.
“We must have left a dozen messages for you!”
“I’m sorry, Aunt Rose. The house phone is broken—”
“Broken?”
“The cat chewed through the cord or something. Is Mama okay? Is she there?”
“She’s busy getting ready.”
“Getting ready for what?”
“Your mama is getting married today,” Rose said.
Vera’s heart felt like it landed in her mouth. “What did you say?” Vera barely managed to say. Where was her breath?
“Yep, she’s getting married at noon today, so if you want to be involved you better get your hind end in gear. She’s getting marred over at Lover’s Arch. They had to get married quickly because of Jon’s visa. We had a lot to take care of.”
Scrappily Ever After Page 4