and, turning my back on both men, wrapped my arm around my waist. I could have used the feel of one of the pets against my leg, but the cats were apparently smarting about my bed being taken by someone else, and Jonah was a lost cause. Or maybe Liam simply needed them more right then, though I couldn’t focus on that.
“Down the stairs at home. It happened at night, so she was lying there a while, unconscious apparently, and then, when she came to, it took her a while to get to a phone. She broke her hip and a wrist.”
I could see it clear as day. The house was a small Colonial, and those stairs were narrow. Liam and I had taken our share of spills on it, but a tumbling child was one thing, a sixty-five-year-old woman with a full-sized body, longer limbs, and osteoporosis another.
But sixty-five wasn’t old. My mother wasn’t old.
“How bad?” I asked. I shouldn’t have been frightened, but I was. My chest shouldn’t have clenched, but it did.
“The wrist was an easy set, but the hip needed surgery.”
“Surgery? When?”
“Last week—”
“And you’re only calling now?” A hand touched my back. The comfort of it calmed me enough to realize that I was being unfair, but my mother’s assistant was on it.
“I’ve been trying Liam all week,” she argued. “I left message after message, and told him to call back, begged him to call back. I didn’t want to leave details on voice mail, but finally I did say that his mother broke her hip, and still he didn’t call back. So either he didn’t listen to my messages, or he just didn’t want to call—because I don’t lie, I have never lied, and that was actually a problem with us, my honesty was hard for him to take. But here’s another thing,” she went on, still in defense mode. “She didn’t want me to call either of you. She said that Liam wouldn’t be any help, and that you’re too busy and not to bother you and that she’d do just fine, but I don’t think she is. She’s sleeping on the living room sofa because she can’t climb—”
“How do they treat a broken hip?” I asked. “What did the surgery do?”
“They put in a single-compression hip screw. The procedure was straightforward, and Margaret had no complications. They had her up and walking the day after surgery, but they wanted her to go to rehab, and she refused. She says she has plenty of friends who can help. Only when her friends call, she tells them she’s fine. I mean, I called one of them when I couldn’t reach you or Liam. Alice Mahr?”
I knew Alice. She and her husband had been at my wedding. She would have known that Mom and I were estranged, but the fact that Mom hadn’t told her where I was living now spoke volumes.
“She didn’t know how to reach you, either,” Annika said, “but at least she already knew about the fall when I called her. She talks with your mother a lot, but Margaret tells her not to come over. She says she’s groggy from meds and needs to sleep. The church women bring food, but I don’t think she’s eating it. She’s lost weight. Honestly? I think she’s depressed.”
That possibility upset me nearly as much as the image of my mother lying at the foot of the stairs in the dark. I knew about depression. I knew how paralyzing it could be. I also knew where it could lead.
Rationally, I asked, “Is anyone with her?”
“She has drop-ins. The VNA comes every morning to check her incision. A physical therapist comes every afternoon to get her up and moving around.”
“Can she not do that on her own?”
“Oh, she can. She has a walker, but I don’t think she’s using it much. She really needs one of you there.”
“Okay,” I said and turned to stare at Liam. He would have to go. If Mom had told her assistant not to bother me because I was too busy, that was code for her not wanting me there. It hurt still, stung like a bad burn. But after four years of reaching out and being treated as dead, I accepted it as fact. “What about the bakery?” I asked.
“I’m on it.”
“Is my mother on it, too?” This was my litmus test. The Buttered Scone was her baby.