Lizzie hops out of the cab with me and then takes her bag and the flowers from the footwell. She nudges the door shut with her hip.
“Just because it’s well known, doesn’t stop it being a big deal, Caleb. It can be both.”
Yeah, I’m not touching that,I think.
Now is so not the time to get into feelings.
“What’s in the bag?” I ask to change the subject.
Her face instantly brightens and her cheeks dimple with her smile. Her eyes flash.
“It’s a surprise!”
“Well, that doesn’t bode well,” I tease, opening the door to Sunflower Ward and shooing her in under my arm.
“Oh shush, where’s your sense of adventure?”
I’m about to reply, but a familiar scent of lilac wafts over us as we step inside and I lose my train of thought. My mind is already down the corridor and around the corner at my mother’s door. So much so that I barely notice the walk there. One moment, I’m getting out of the truck with Lizzie and the next, I’m knocking on the door to Ma’s room. The short walk in between is just muscle memory.
“Caleb!” the nurse cries when she opens the door to my Ma’s rooms. “So good to see you, come in, come in, I was just finishing up.”
“Afternoon, Denise.” We didn’t start on first name terms, but Ma’s been at Yellow Fields for nearly eight years. It’d only taken a few months of being called ‘Mr. Walker’ for it to become grating. And Denise had been a stickler for fairness: if she was to call me Caleb, I had to call her Denise. “How is she, today?”
“Really well actually.” Denise smiles, stepping out of the way so we can enter. It’s hard not to notice the look of curiosity she casts over Lizzie, but her professionalism returns quickly. “She had a good night’s sleep last night and has taken her medication well across the week, so right now she’s bright as a daisy.”
I try to see the positive in that, but usually when Ma is bright and energetic it’s because she’s safely lost in one of her delusions. Which meant she probably won’t remember who I—
“Caleb!”
Or maybe not…
My mother, in all her dressing gown and hair curler glory, comes out of her kitchen with the brightest smile on her face.
“You’ve come to visit!”
Her tone implies I’ve been MIA for years. I’d be irked, given I come by every weekend, were it not for the look of radiant joy on her face.
If it wasn’t for the curlers haphazardly falling out of her fluffy gray hair she might have looked more like herself. Particularly when her eyes land on Lizzie. I’d know that inquisitive gleam anywhere.
“Well, lookie here, my boy brings home a girl!”
Surprise has Lizzie and me hurrying to speak at the same time.
“Um no, Ma—”
“Well, Mrs. Wal—”
“Oh, quiet the both of you. You’re red in the face enough for me to see the truth. Don’t waste your breath on nonsense tales. Come in, come in!” She waves a hand, the arm of her dressing gown swinging wildly. I notice something heavy weighing down one side and wonder what she’s stashed in that pocket. “I suppose I should do the motherly thing and grill you both. Let me just go make some cups of coffee…”
“…and I think that’s my cue to leave,” Denise says, shooting us both a sympathetic look.
Lizzie grins back at the nurse.
Denise just nods emphatically and winks as she leaves, medication box in hand.
When Ma comes back out to find us still standing in the hall, she posts a hand on each hip.
“Caleb Donald Walker, I did not raise you in a barn. Stop loitering and come sit down.”