The woman turned. Her jaw was slack, her expression blank.
“Mom, I’d like you to meet someone.” Mackenzie crossed the small space and hugged her. “This is a friend of mine. Dominic Serrano.”
Her mother handed Mackenzie the tape and paper and faced him squarely. “You may call me Tabitha or Bea, although many people here call me Cathy.”
“What name would you prefer, Mrs. Foster-Shaw?” he asked.
She cocked an eyebrow and gave him a confused look. “Why are you calling me by my husband’s name? It’s his, not mine. You’d need to call him that, except that he’s dead.”
“Mom, please. Dom didn’t know.” Turning to Dom, she said, “My father’s name was Foster Shaw. I hyphenated it, making it my last name when we moved here and I started college. My mother is Cathy Shaw.”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Shaw.” Dom took her hand and bent to kiss it, but, scowling, she pulled away and slapped his fingers.
“Young man, your forward behavior will get you nowhere with me. I’m a married woman and that is just not acceptable.”
Dom bit the insides of both cheeks in an attempt to stifle a grin. “Yes, of course. Please forgive me.”
“Mom, here.” Mackenzie put her arm around the older woman, guiding her to a chair next to the bed, and threw a rueful smile to Dom over her shoulder. “Sorry,” she mouthed.
A nurse entered the room as Mackenzie was getting her mother situated in the chair. “Mackenzie, could I see you up at the nurses’ station when you get a chance? We need to update some of your mother’s paperwork.”
“Dom, do you mind sitting with her? I’ll be right back.” When he nodded, she squatted next to her mother. “Mom, I’ll be right back. Do you want Dom to read from some of your journals? He doesn’t know about all the travels you and Daddy made. I’m sure he’d love to hear about them.”
When her mother stared at her with blank doe-like eyes, Mackenzie kissed the woman’s fingers, then stood up and walked back to Dom. “Over there is a shelf of her travel journals. She’d probably enjoy it if you picked one to read to her. She and my father traveled everywhere—didn’t you, Mom—and she journaled the whole time. I won’t be long.”
“And you would be…?” Her mother had forgotten her already and Mackenzie slipped through the door.
On the shelf beside Mrs. Shaw’s chair, stacks of notebooks appeared to be organized by color and date. Dom ran a finger over the spines, selected one from the middle, and sat down in the chair across from her. Mrs. Shaw looked at him expectantly. Mackenzie must do this a lot, he imagined. He settled back in the chair, opened the journal and began to read aloud.
March 7, 1985
The weather is beginning to turn warmer. I can’t help but think we should load up the trailer and be on the move north again. Old habits die hard, Foster tells me. Says I worry too much. I suppose he’s right. Don’t know if I’ll ever feel at ease staying in one place as summer approaches. Mackenzie Marie threw a tantrum in the grocery store today, right in front of the huge wall of candy at the checkout counter. I tried to look stern and turn my back on her like all the books say to do, but she was just so cute. She’s always so cute. Hopefully, she’ll grow out of this stage soon. I think the employees cringe whenever they see us come through the door.
Boneless chicken breasts were on sale, so I bought two packages and will try a recipe from the newspaper yesterday for chicken satay. Made with peanut butter, of all things. Susan came over—
“That’s more of a real journal, Dominic. Boring and uneventful. I think we were living in a small town in Idaho at that time. We did most of our traveling before Mackenzie was born. She was two and a half in the one you’re reading from. The red ones—” she pointed to the far left of the shelf “—are Foster’s. You can read them if you’d like. If you pull out one of the green ones, May 1980, you can read our account of the eruption of Mt. St. Helens. Foster and I were living in a small town in southwest Washington at the time, right in the shadow of the mountain.”
Mrs. Shaw met his gaze with strong clear eyes, her shoulders now erect, and with her chin lifted,