Kayla, whose eyes were wide and fearful. “That’s Bud for you. His wife’s on death’s doorstep, and he decides it’s a good time to go elk hunting.”
“My God.” Kayla moved the cloth from his mom’s forehead to the back of her neck, murmuring words of comfort.
Tony’s heart clenched painfully as he forced his eyes back to the road and accelerated. His mother’s house was normally ten minutes from the hospital.
They made it in five.
Kayla was already unbuckling his mother’s seat belt when he came around to the passenger side. “I’ll run in and see if they have a wheelchair.”
“Stop.” His heart stalled in his chest as he caught her right hand. “What happened to your other hand?”
She glanced down at the angry stripe of blood trickling off her left thumb. “It’s just a scratch. Probably banged it on the broken glass from the door.”
If he thought he couldn’t possibly feel shittier, he’d been wrong. “We should get that looked at. You might need stitches or—”
“I’m fine, Tony.” She pulled her hand free. “Let’s focus on your mom.”
As she scurried away to find a wheelchair, his mom’s eyelids fluttered again. Her gaze fixed on him, and for the briefest instant, he saw a glimpse of the mom he remembered. The one who taught him to moonwalk in fuzzy socks across the hardwood floor. The one who tickled him ’til he fell over in the grass, laughing as Joel toddled through the flowers nearby.
“It’s me, Mom.” He swallowed past the lump in his throat. “Tony.”
Her brow furrowed. “Bud. He’ll be so angry.”
The words sliced through his heart like a dagger. “We’re at the hospital, Mom. Let’s get you inside.”
“Too expen—”
“I said I’m paying.” The words came out in a snarl, and he ordered himself to tread more gently. For God’s sake, she was sick. “Don’t worry about the money, okay?”
She didn’t answer, which was just as well. Footsteps made him turn, and Kayla came sprinting through the door, clutching a fresh wad of gauze to her injured thumb. Behind her were two nurses, both in scrubs. The male nurse pushed a wheelchair as the female pulled on a pair of sterile gloves.
She got right up to the Jeep before Tony recognized her. “Nyla Franklin?”
“Tony?” She stepped closer, sympathy clouding her eyes. “You’re here. Leo said he’d seen your mom. She’s worse?”
He nodded and stepped aside, grateful to see his old classmate. As the two nurses got busy unloading his mother, he stepped back beside Kayla. “We went to school together,” he explained, watching as they helped his mother into the wheelchair. “Nyla’s sister, Mandi—she’s my friend Leo’s wife.”
“Ex-wife,” Nyla called over her shoulder as they hustled his mom toward the hospital doors. “You’ve been gone a while.”
“No kidding.” Tony closed his eyes, gut twisting with pain.
He’d been gone too long.
He hadn’t been gone long enough.
The memories washed through him, icy and dull, as painful as if he’d never left at all.
Chapter Eighteen
Three hours later, Kayla sat alone at Connie’s bedside.
That was the woman’s name, though Kayla wasn’t sure whether to think of her as Connie or Mrs. Glockman or Tony’s mom. The few words Kayla had heard her speak hadn’t left her with a solid impression of who the woman was or how she’d want to be addressed.
Tony was speaking privately with the doctor, so Kayla had volunteered to stay with his mom. As it turned out, Kayla’s sliced-open thumb required four stitches, which was hardly a big deal.
But Tony’s reaction was like he’d backed over Fireball before taking a flamethrower to Kayla’s camera gear. He’d fussed and worried, in between tending to his mother and dragging his hands through his hair until it stood up on end. Kayla finally ordered him out of the room so he could go confer with the medical team while she stayed with his mother.
In the time they’d been here, they’d diagnosed her with pneumonia and an acute bronchial infection. She was resting now, which was more than could be said for Tony.
That look. The one in Tony’s eyes when his mother had spoken of Bud. It wasn’t just haunted. It was a mixture of fury and betrayal and something Kayla couldn’t place but never wanted to see again as long as she lived.
“You can read to her if you want.”
Kayla turned to see the nurse—was it Nyla?—standing in the doorway. She wore pale blue scrubs and a tentative smile as she gestured at Tony’s mom.
“I saw the book sticking out of your purse.” Nyla stepped