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After getting in my car, I wondered two things. First, if I should tell Jim about Michael in case he saw my contacts. Then again, what would I say?Hi, honey, how was your day? Oh, by the way, this hot guy I’ve been hanging with at the gym and hiding from you gave me his number. And second, how did I go to the market today and still have nothing for dinner? The way our relationship had been lately, I wondered which would bother him more.

CHAPTER 12

“Look what you made me do,” Gia said. She had dropped her backpack on the back of the couch, but it fell off, and its contents spilled on the floor. I wasn’t the one who didn’t zip up my backpack. She shoved a jumble of papers, pencils, and pens back inside. Before I could say she was going to lose points for a crumpled history essay, she let out a low growl of frustration. I couldn’t keep up with her moods. Perimenopause and teenage angst had a lot in common.

“Do you want to talk about it?” I asked.

“No.”

I wanted my little girl back. The one who told me everything. Her friends’ moms were always commenting on how polite she was. I wondered if she had an identical twin who went out in public, and the yucky one sometimes came home and lived in her room. “Obviously something happened today,” I said.

“I said I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Okay. I’m going to see your grandfather, but I could get you a snack before I go.” She was seventeen, but I’d been doing the snack thing her whole life. I’d stop next year when she was gone.

“Not hungry.” She ran up to her room, leaving her backpack on the floor still not zipped. It was a safe assumption that she hadn’t made up with Jason, which I wasn’t broken up over. She didn’t need a boyfriend right now, with her close to graduation anyway.

Twenty minutes later I was walking down the hall to Dad’s room when I saw Jerry coming out of one of the administrative offices. To avoid him, I slipped quietly into one of the resident’s rooms, shut the door, and peeked out the little glass window at the top of the door.

“Who are you hiding from?” A heavily Russian-accented voice startled me. I turned to see Mr. Zlotnik, an eighty-five-year-old man.

“My brother’s out there.” I was being ridiculous, but I didn’t want to listen to my little brother’s judgments about me again.

“Say no more. My brother turned me in to KGB. You stay here as long as you like,” Mr. Zlotnik said.

“Thanks,” I said.

Mr. Zlotnik was sitting in a folding chair playing solitaire on a TV table. Several of the cards had fallen on the floor, but he hadn’t seemed to notice. He smiled sweetly. “You remind me of my youngest girl.”

I opened the door a crack and looked down the hall. Jerry was walking toward the dining room. My five-year-old self had the urge to stick out my tongue at his back. Since the coast was clear, I said goodbye to Mr. Zlotnik and thanked him for his hospitality. As I closed the door, he called out in his Russian lilt, “Come back soon. I like having young sexy thing in my room.” I would not be going anywhere near Room 125 ever again.

As I escaped in the opposite direction of the dining room, I saw Michael at the front desk. He was in his usual uniform of sweatpants and a T-shirt. I didn’t think I’d ever seen him in anything else. Next to him was an elegant gray-haired woman bent into a C over a walker. She was wearing a black pleated skirt, a black blazer, and black low-heeled pumps. She looked as if she was going to a funeral. She and Michael shared the same strong pointed chin, but Michael had a tiny dimple in his.

“Maggie’s over there,” Helen said, pointing at me. Helen was the head of admissions of Brooklawn. At sixty, with her bob haircut, cardigan collection, and calm demeanor, you’d never know she was a black belt in Taekwondo. “I’ll join you in just a minute,” she said and picked up the phone.

Michael waved, and I walked over to him and his mother. “Hey, it seems like forever since I’ve seen you,” he said. It had been four days; had he missed me? “This is my mother, Charlotte Dewy. Mom, this is Maggie, the woman I told you about.”

He told her about me? What did he tell her? “It’s nice to meet you, Mrs. Dewy,” I said.

She steadied herself on the walker and reached her hand out to shake mine. “It’s nice to meet you, Maggie.” She turned toward Michael. “I don’t know why we’re here. I had one fall, and then Michael insisted we take a look at this place.”

“It wasn’t just one fall,” Michael said. He looked exhausted, as if he had fought a bear.

“It was hard for my dad to make the move too,” I said.

“I’ve been fine on my own for the last fifteen years, and I’ll be fine on my own for fifteen more,” she stated emphatically.

Michael raised his eyebrows toward me to indicate what he had to deal with. Charlotte caught him and then took her cane and playfully swatted him. As she did, she almost lost her balance, but Michael grabbed her before she fell.

“Thanks for proving my point,” he said.

“I wasn’t even close to falling,” she said and turned to me. “Michael thinks he knows what’s best for me.”

“One of us has to be the grown-up around here,” he said. How did I suddenly get in the middle?

She looked down at his sweatpants. “This from a man who can’t put on a proper pair of pants or keep a woman long-term.”

Michael glared at her as Helen came over. “I’m so sorry, but it’s going to be a few more minutes before I’ll be free to give you a tour,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind waiting.”