me from across the hospital bed. “You know, your mother has told me a lot about you.”
“She didn’t tell me anything about you.” I looked down at my mom, who dimpled guilelessly back at me. “What has she been saying?”
He pulled up a chair and settled himself down in it, crossing his left leg over his right. There was a languid quality to him, as if he was slipping through cool water. “That you’ve got a degree in art history from a fancy college,” he said.
“Not that fancy,” I retorted.
He was running a thumb along the pale skin of my mother’s inner arm where it lay on the blanket, gently, like a father caressing a sleeping child. I felt something stir inside me, a desire to feel that finger pressed against my own flesh. “That you know lots about antiques. That you’ve spent the last few years making expensive houses look nice. That you are in frequent proximity to rich people. Billionaires. Hedge fund types.”
“This is interesting to you for some reason?”
“I could use someone like you. For some work I’ve been doing. Someone with a discerning eye.” I could feel Lachlan’s assessing gaze, studying me, and I suddenly understood: He was a con, just like my mom. That explained his coolheaded demeanor, the invisible power he seemed to wield over my mother. How close to legitimacy was he skating? I wondered. Whatever his game was, it was clearly working for him.
My mother struggled upright in the bed and shook a finger at him. “Lachlan, stop it. Leave her alone.”
“What? You can’t blame me for asking. You’ve spoken so highly of her.”
“Nina has a career.” My mother’s smile shone up at me from the bed. “My bright girl. She has a BA.”
The way she pronounced those two letters, as if they were a magic spell that was going to protect us both, nearly broke me. I was glad my mother had never seen me fetching soy lattes for my boss, had never visited my sad Flushing apartment or witnessed me polishing a billionaire’s gilded bidet. “I’m weighing some options while I’m out here, but thanks,” I lied to Lachlan. “I’m not sure that your line of work is my cup of tea.”
“What makes you think you know my line of work? So presumptuous.” His smile undercut his indignation, and I saw that he had teeth that were white but lopsided. I thought of my own crooked teeth, the result of being unable to afford dentistry as a child, and wondered if we had that much in common. I found myself smiling back at him, despite myself. He stood, and patted my mom’s hand. “I have to run.”
“You’re not leaving?” My mother’s eyes were open suddenly, and pleading.
“You know you can call me if you need anything at all, Lily-belle.” He leaned over my mother and pressed his lips gently against her forehead, as if she were a tiny precious thing that might break under undue pressure. I wanted to build a wall of steel around my heart, a defense against this man, but something about the tenderness in that kiss moved my defenses. I wondered how long he’d been taking care of my mom, and if it had been a hustle on his part. If there had been anything in it for him, I couldn’t see what it was. My mother was broke and broken; she had nothing to give. He seemed genuinely fond of her.
“He’s a good man,” my mother whispered to me. She clutched my hand. “A real softy, underneath it all. I don’t know what I would have done without him.”
Maybe that’s why, as he left the room, I accepted the piece of paper that he slipped me, the one with his phone number on it, “In case you change your mind,” he whispered in my ear. Maybe that’s why I didn’t throw the paper away, but tucked it into my wallet.
On the day that my mother and I left the hospital, with a fistful of prescriptions and a chemo schedule in my purse, Lachlan’s phone number was still there. It was there when I got to my mother’s Mid-City apartment