“Girls, get up. Get up, get up!” Mom’s voice calls us from the door as she switches on the light.
I groan and pull the blanket over my face. “Why? It’s Saturday.”
“There’s been an emergency. We need to go. Now.”
I bolt upright, fingers pushing into the mattress. My mind thinks a million thoughts about Dad and something bad happening. I want him to come home, but in a happy way. Not a sad way. “What is it?” I ask.
Sofia sits up, too. She brushes her dark brown hair away from eyes as big and wide as the day her dad got heatstroke and had to go to the hospital.
Mom marches into my room with both of our shoes and tosses them on the floor by the bed. She’s already dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, but her hair is frizzy and sticking out around her face. “It’s Pat,” she says. “Come on. We’ve got to go.”
“Grammy? What’s wrong with her?” I hop out of bed and over Sofia’s sleeping bag to grab my shoes. Sofia already has her shoes on. She stands up next to me.
“She’s missing,” says Mom. “Her home care helper came to her house today and she’s gone. Car in the garage. Door wide open. They haven’t found her yet.”
My feet grow roots straight into the ground. “She’s gone?”
“She can’t have gotten too far. Not too far,” says Mom, rushing out of the room.
My breath catches in my throat. Grammy is Dad’s mom. We haven’t seen her in almost a year. And the last time we did, there was a big fight. Then Dad’s depression got really bad and … now she’s missing?
Sofia squeezes my right hand. The corners of her mouth turn up in a smile, but her eyes stay sad because she knows. She knows I’m scared. “It’s going to be okay,” she says. She touches her cross necklace. “I’ll say a prayer.”
I swallow the lump of something hard in my throat and nod. I still don’t know what I think of God and praying, but I know Sofia believes it helps. “Thanks.”
We walk to the car, hand in hand.
Sofia and I have been best friends since first grade when Adam Shuler pushed her into a mud puddle and I pushed him back. Standing next to her is like looking out my bedroom window when the sun is setting over the almond orchard and smelling the almost-night air.
On the way to Sofia’s house, Mom’s cell phone rings. She answers it. “Hello … oh, thank goodness … yes … yes … I’m on my way … I understand … thank you … bye.” Mom pulls the car to the side of the road and sits there with her hands on the steering wheel for a second.
“Mom?”
She grabs the back of the passenger seat and turns around. “They found her.”
I lean my head against the back of the seat, the seatbelt pushing against my ear.
“Is she okay?” asks Sofia. “Is she hurt?”
“Well, she’s … confused.”
“Confused?” I ask.
Mom nods. “I think … I don’t think she can live on her own anymore. Her home care helper told me a few months ago that she was seeming more forgetful. But your dad had just left …” Her voice trails off, the silence bringing back more memories than words ever could. “I was too upset to do much about it besides up the frequency of visits from her helper. And now … this is all my fault.”
“It’s not your fault, Mrs. Mitchell,” Sofia pipes up.
“Thanks, sweetie.” Mom looks at me. “Kate, I think she’s really sick.”
My heart is still beating fast as if I’ve just raced Sofia through the almond orchard. “Sick how?”
“Sick in her brain.”
I pull my knees up to my chest and hug them against the seat belt. “Like Dad?”
Mom unclicks her buckle so she can turn all the way around. “Not exactly. Your dad has depression. But Grammy, I think she has what’s called dementia. It makes old people forget things. I’m …” Mom pauses. “I’m going to invite her to live with us. We can take care of her here.”
I bite the inside of my cheek, and my stomach buzzes like a guitar chord played just a little bit off. When I was little, we visited Grammy all the time. I would have loved her to come live with us. But if she’s forgetting things, what if she’s not the same Grammy? Then again, I don’t want her to be the same Grammy as last time we saw her, when she was so angry and mean. I don’t want that Grammy in our house.
“She’s going to need help, Kate,” Mom continues. “Help with … well, with everything.”
“Everything,” I whisper. The word gets bigger, so full of questions it might pop. It presses against all of us, pushing us apart. It seeps into the spaces between Sofia and me. It crowds out the sound of the birds chirping. The word everything changes things.
Mom turns around and puts the car into drive. Her eyes glance at me in the rearview mirror as she clears her throat. “Thanks for coming to sleep over last night, Sofia. I’m sorry it had to end early.”
“It’s okay,” Sofia says. But she’s looking at me when she says it. “It’s going to be okay.”
I look away because I don’t believe her.