CHAPTER TWO
THREE WEEKS EARLIER
At just after sevenA.M.Paige Hamilton woke up to find her mother sitting on the side of her bed in her pajamas, her normally youthful features betrayed by a series of worried lines that made her look every one of her seventy years.
“Mom?”
“How was your date last night?”
“You woke me up to ask about my date?”
“How was it?
“Not good.” Paige pushed herself up on her elbows, recalling last night’s unfortunate rendezvous as she shook her shoulder-length brown hair from her eyes. The man had been at least twenty pounds heavier and five inches shorter than his profile on Match Sticks indicated. What was the matter with these guys? Did they think that women didn’t have eyes, that they wouldn’t notice the discrepancy?
“That’s too bad,” her mother said. “You thought he sounded promising.”
“Mom…what’s going on?”
“I don’t want to worry you.”
“Too late for that.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. Tell me what’s wrong.”
Her mother’s sigh shook the double bed. “I think I might be having a stroke.”
Paige was instantly on her feet, dancing abstract circles on the hardwood floor. “What are you talking about? What makes you think you’re having a stroke?” She searched her mother’s face for signs of anything off balance. A drooping eyelid, a twitching lip. “You’re not slurring your words. Are you dizzy? Are you in pain?”
“I’m not in pain. I’m not dizzy,” her mother repeated. “You have such a lovely figure,” she said, as if this were a perfectly normal thing to say under the circumstances.
Paige grabbed her pink silk robe from the foot of the bed and wrapped it around her naked body, trying to make sense of what was happening.
“I didn’t realize you slept in the nude,” her mother continued. “I always wanted to do that, but your father preferred pajamas, so I followed his lead.”
“Mom! Focus! Why do you think you’re having a stroke?”
“It’s my vision,” her mother said. “It’s kind of weird.”
“What do you mean, it’s kind of weird? How weird?”
“I’m seeing all these flashing lights and squiggly lines, and I remember reading that a change in vision is often the first sign you’re having a stroke. Or maybe a detached retina. What do you think?”
“I think I’m calling nine-one-one.”
“Really, darling? Do you think that’s necessary?”
“Yes, Mom. I really, really do.” Paige grabbed her cellphone from the night table and pressed the emergency digits. “Try to stay calm,” she advised her mother, althoughshewas the one on the verge of hysteria. She’d lost her father to cancer two years ago. She wasn’t ready to lose her mother, too. At thirty-three, she was much too young to be an orphan. “What are you doing?” she asked as her mother pushed herself off the bed.
“I should probably get dressed.”
“Sit back down,” Paige said, listening to the phone’s persistent ring against her ear. “Don’t move.” She threw her free arm into the air in frustration. “What’s the matter with these people? Why aren’t they answering the phone? I thought this was supposed to be an emerg—”
“Nine-one-one,” a woman’s voice said, interrupting Paige’s tirade. “What is your emergency?”
“My mother’s having a stroke.”