Mrs. Graves passed during the night. I was asleep in the chair when Ma shook me awake and whispered, “She’s gone, Lincoln. Let’s get home.”
I was still half in a dream where I was trying to leave a strange room but the door going out took me right back inside the very same room. I kept going round and round and round, not knowing how to get out.
And now I was wakin’ up in a strange room with a dead body in it.
I was feeling mighty bamboozled.
“What are we supposed to do now?” I asked.
“Shh.”
Didn’t seem like much of an answer to me. And I wasn’t sure why we were bein’ quiet, or why tiptoein’ was in order. It wasn’t like we were going to wake her up. But I was too tired to put up a fuss and more’n happy to go. I followed Ma out the door, glad it didn’t take me back inside the very same room.
When we were in our own apartment, I went straight for my mattress. And I was half asleep and half wishing for an extra blanket when Ma came over and whispered, “I’ll be back. I need to make a few calls.”
I don’t know how long she was gone, but when she slipped back in, I thought I was dreaming, ’cause there was a cat curled up at my chest, purring.
And then I remembered—I had a cat!
“Ma?”
“Shh. Everything’s fine.”
The purring at my chest made me believe it was so.
Ma did not take pity on me in the morning. “You’re coming with me,” she said soon after her alarm went off.
“But, Ma!”
“Don’t fuss. You’re comin’.”
“What about Mrs. Graves?”
“They came and got her last night.”
“Who did?”
“The coroner’s office. You didn’t hear?”
“No!”
“Well, they did. Now get movin’.”
“But, Ma!”
“Get movin’!”
On the bus ride to Brookside, I noticed the dark bags under Ma’s eyes, but she wasn’t lettin’ on how little sleep she’d had, if she’d had any at all. She told me that the Mirror Cats would be fine and that everything else would be taken care of without us. “Families have responsibilities, whether they like it or not.”
“She had family?”
“I told you she did.”
“But…who are they?”
“Two feuding sons. One’s in Florida, the other’s in Los Angeles.”
“How do you know?”
“I found a letter and instructions in a drawer.”
“You went nosin’ through her stuff?”
“Mm-hmm,” she said.
It was a highfalutin mm-hmm, too. One that said loud and clear that I’d best not be passing judgment.
Still, I couldn’t help thinking about it. How could someone have two kids and wind up dyin’ with strangers? What were her sons like? Why were they feuding? Did they know where she was living? Did they know how she was living? Did they know their ma had lost track of what was garbage and what wasn’t?
Did they know she needed help?
At Brookside, I tried escapin’ into my notebook. Into a story. I had to be at Brookside all day, and I just wanted to block it out. Before, I could always do that with writing stories, but now I couldn’t seem to get into one. I couldn’t tune out bein’ there. And bein’ there felt like it was sucking the life right out of me.
“You doing okay today, dear?” Gloria asked me after lunch. “Your mother told me about what happened. You’ve had quite a couple of days, haven’t you?”
I just nodded and told her I was fine. But I felt strange.
Like something inside me had changed.
Ma seemed to have changed, too, but in a different way. “I got a raise!” she whispered on the bus ride home.
“Really?”
“A good one! It came with a glowing review from the director, too. He said he likes my work ethic and my patience with the residents. He told me he always hears good things about me and that he’s grateful for the way I stepped up during Thanksgiving. He also noticed the way you pitched in and told me I’m raising a fine young man.”
“He said that?”
She gave me a look that was all parts mischief. “Well, he doesn’t know about you callin’ folks crazies or forcing garlic on me to fight off psychic vampires.”
“I didn’t force garlic on you! And I sure didn’t tell you to peel it!”
She laughed. A big, smiley, cheek-poppin’ laugh. I hadn’t seen her this happy in…ever.
“You know what this is?” she asked, wagging a Brookside envelope with her paycheck in it.
“A Brookside envelope with your paycheck in it?” I ventured.
“It’s more than that. It’s freedom. Tomorrow I’ll send Ellie what I owe her, plus some thank-you money, and then I can start savin’ for us.”
“Uh…can the thank-you money and the savin’ maybe wait ’til after Christmas?”
She turned a cool look on me. “What? Getting a cat’s not enough?”
My face flashed wide, but it came back in quick. The truth is, if she’d have asked me what my wildest dreams would bring me for Christmas, I’d have said a cat. Jack had just arrived early, is all.
She laughed at my face flashing around and said, “We’ll have a fine Christmas, Lincoln. I promise. And next year? What do you say we start looking for an apartment with heat in it?”
“That would be nice,” I agreed.
“Mighty nice,” she said, and she smiled the whole way home.