But it’s the anchor’s words, not the image, that practically cause heart failure. My mouth falls open. Our heads turn in slow motion to face each other and it’s like looking straight into a mirror. We look back in unison at the TV.
The chyron at the bottom of the screen reads:A body has been discovered at Langley Woods.
NINA
Despite the new locks and the new garage door code, come the next morning, I still don’t feel comfortable leaving my mother alone in my house all day, and I have to go to work.
For as hard as I try, I also can’t get the image out of my head of someone breaking into my house. I obsess over it. I fixate on it. And it’s not just the break-in because now Jake’s gun is missing, and Jake is still missing. I think of how defenseless my mother is in my house all alone all day. What would she do if someone tried to break in again? How could she defend herself? What if she’s not as lucky the next time?
It makes my stomach churn to think of something bad happening to her. I consider calling in sick to work and staying with her, but that would only be a one-day reprieve; it couldn’t go on indefinitely.
I go into her room shortly after I’ve woken up. The door is open an inch. I lay a palm on it and press it all the way open, padding lightly across the room to where she lies in the guest bed, sound asleep on her side with the blankets pulled clear up to her neck. I lean down to touch her shoulder and shake her gently awake. “Mom,” I whisper. “It’s me.” She stirs, her eyes opening and focusing on my face, though I wonder how much of me she can see. She describes her macular degeneration as a scribble around her central field of vision so that she has trouble seeing in that direct line of sight, and yet there are times she stares directly into my eyes and I feel the warmth of her gaze, the intense focus, sharpness and recognition. She knows it’s me. She can see my eyes. It gives new life to me; it fills me with hope, because I’m not completely lost to her yet.
“What’s wrong?” she asks, coming to and pushing herself up into a sitting position. It’s still dark outside, too early for the sun to be up. On the other side of the windows, it’s black. The only light comes from the bedroom down the hall.
I don’t want to worry her and so I say, “Nothing is wrong.” I sit on the edge of the bed. I reach for her hand. “It’s just that I have to leave for work soon, Mom. I had an idea. I want to drive you to your house for the day. You can stay there, and then I’ll pick you up again after school and we’ll come back here.”
“Why?” she asks.
“I’d just feel better if you weren’t alone in the house.”
“Why?” she asks again. “What’s going to happen to me?”
“Nothing, I hope. But someone broke in the other day, Mom. I’d rather you weren’t here alone.”
She draws her eyebrows together and says, “No, that’s too much trouble for you, Nina,” which I knew she was going to say because she never wants to put me out. “I’ll be fine.”
“It’s no trouble,” I promise her. “I’ll feel so much better if you’re not here because, if you are, then I’ll worry about you all day. It’s easier on me if you just let me take you home. You’ll be doing me a favor.”
When I say it like that, she acquiesces. She pushes the sheets from her body and swings her legs to the floor. “If it makes you feel better, then okay.”
I drive her to her house on the way into work. It’s not a long drive. She lives in a ranch on a street with smaller, older homes, each one practically identical to the next. She’s lived here for years. She knows her neighbors. She trusts them. She will be safer here while I’m at work.
I drop her off. “Lock the door once you’re inside,” I say through the open window as she walks away from me. I watch as she struggles to get the key in the lock, but she does, stepping inside and closing the screen door behind her. As I pull away, I see my mother’s face from the other side of the door, darkened and disfigured by the fiberglass screen.
I haven’t driven a block when I get a call from Officer Boone, asking if I can stop into the police station this morning. “I know you have to work. It will be quick,” he promises.
I drive to the police station. He meets me in the front of the station and I ask, feeling anxious, my anxiety coming through in my voice, “What is it? Have you found something out about Jake?”
“No, unfortunately. Not yet.”
I follow Officer Boone as he leads me to his desk further back in the police station, in a roomful of desks. He has me sit in a little upholstered chair beside his and offers me coffee, which I turn down, shaking my head.
“What is it, then? What did you want to tell me?”
“I actually have some questions for you, Mrs. Hayes.”
“For me?”
“Yes.”
“What kind of questions?”
“Well, I’ve been speaking to a few of your acquaintances,” he says.
“And?” I ask, feeling a change come over me all of a sudden because I realize that Officer Boone hasn’t called me here to tell me something, to update me on the case, but to ask questions. My walls go up. I wonder who he’s been speaking to and what they’ve been telling him about me. Officer Boone would have spoken to Jake’s parents. I’ve never known how Jake’s parents feel about me because they’re not the most affectionate or approachable people. They like me well enough. I just don’t know that I’m the woman they would have chosen for their son to marry if the decision had been theirs.
“And it’s come to my attention that there was some strife between you and Dr. Hayes of late.”