Chapter 40

Chapter 40 of 56 · 8-minute read

“Dix!” I shove my phone into my pocket and scramble to throw my arms around his neck. “You’re back?”

He laughs and pats his chest as if to check how solid he is. “I think so. Pretty sure I’m not a mirage.” He squeezes me and kisses my neck. “I wrapped up my business deal and had a celebratory client dinner until about an hour ago.

“But Dix, you weren’t supposed to be back tonight. I thought you hated driving long distances after dark.”

“I do, but Virgil called me and said you were all alone here, and it might be a hard night for you, so I decided to surprise you and come back early to be with you. I thought you might need me.”

Pulling back to look into his face, I shake my head when I mean “Yes!” and bury my face in his chest. His business suits smells vaguely of cologne and cigar smoke. I do need him. Maybe I don’t feel the romantic longing for him that I felt for him as a teen, but we’re grown up now, and our friendship is solid. And I don’t mind his kisses at all. Maybe this is just how mature love is when our hormones are restrained rather than rampant. Maybe friendship is not just the basis for our relationship but the best I can expect.

There’s an illness brewing in Dixon’s aura. Nothing for a few years, but something to watch. Maybe my purpose in his life is to return all the favors he’s done for me. Maybe I’m the one who will bring him extra blankets or magazines on real estate trends in the future.

Was Christabel right? Am I standing here with the man who’s right for me in this cycle of my life? Has love found me again? I can’t deny the gentleness I feel for Dix in this moment, but I do wish the feelings were stronger. I’ve been too busy focusing on my mom to think much about love, but my mom has been thrilled to see me with Dix and witness his attentiveness and adoration. She hated the horny, love-’em-and-leave-’em high school boy he was but appreciates the successful businessman he is.

“Laurie? Dix!” Virgil strides toward us, his cane tapping the tile floor as he goes. He clasps my shoulder when he reaches us. “We’re moving her tonight. She’s awake, and we don’t want her startled, so best if you’re with her on our walk over to the behavioral ward. The psychiatrist will meet us there, and you’ll need to spend about ten minutes signing some paperwork.”

“What can I do, little brother?”

Virgil nods his appreciation. “Laurie’s cousin’s best friend works the night shift on the main floor. They’re not aware that we’re moving Miss Emma tonight, but if they see us, I fully expect they’ll call Fallon and she’ll tell Everett and he’ll be here before we can complete the transfer. I have a bad feeling about interference. I want this to go smoothly. Let’s not let anyone get Miss Emma stirred up again.”

A bad feeling? That’s code for a witch whose intuition is screaming a warning.

“Got it, little brother. I’ll hang out at the front entrance and slow Everett down if he shows his face.” Dixon bends to peck me on the cheek before he rushes off.

Virgil guides me by the elbow to the double doors. “Stay right here. Don’t move. I’ll be back in five minutes or less with your mom.”

My heart is pounding as he disappears once again through the doors. I’m alone in the wide corridor that smells of floor cleaner and antiseptic. The click of heels echoes somewhere in the distance, then a door swishes closed. True to Virgil’s word, the double doors open in seconds under five minutes, and he pushes my mom’s gurney through the doors to meet me.

She looks better, I tell myself, without all the cables and tubes attached to her, but seeing her so frail and weak slashes at my soul. I barely recognize the bony, withered woman tangled up in a white thermal blanket in front of me. I never would have guessed a year ago that she would deteriorate so fast. Her hair is now completely white and thin enough that I can see her scalp through the matted puffs of hair. I have to force myself not to let my distress show on my face. My mom always took great care with her appearance to please my dad, however unsuccessfully. If she had any idea how disheveled and wretched she looks, she’d be horrified.

“Mama?”

I lean in to kiss her jaundiced forehead as I take her IV-bruised hand in mine. It’s as fragile and quivering as a baby bird, but her arthritic fingers close around mine instinctively. Her eyes are watery, but not from crying. Her cheekbones rise in sharp contrast to her sunken eyes and jaws. She stares at me as if trying to figure out either where she is or why I’m here, and the panic behind her expression takes root.

Hold it together, Lauren, I tell myself. Hold it together.

“Am I going home?” Her voice is hoarse from lack of use.

“It’s okay, Mama. We’re moving you to a, um, a better room where you can finish recovering before you go home.”

I glimpse Virgil’s unspoken disapproval as we begin to roll slowly down the empty corridor. He doesn’t want me to give her false hope, but I cannot tell her it’s unlikely she’ll ever go home, even to sit in her favorite rocking chair on her back porch and watch the fireflies at night. I’m taking it one day at a time, and until I know for certain that she’s not going home, I will keep that hope alive for her. Better false hope than to have none at all and give up in despair.

Virgil seems to read my thoughts. The disapproval in his face softens into compassion, and he grants me a single nod.

My mom’s panic grows, but she doesn’t withdraw her hand from mine. “You look familiar. Do I know you?”

I gasp and pull away. My back slams into the corridor wall. Is there nothing left of my mama in this fragile shell of humanity? Her bright pink energy has faded to a pale and patchy puce. So little of her is still recognizable energetically.

“Miss Emma?” Virgil bends over the gurney rail to speak lowly in my mom’s ear. “This is Laurie, your beautiful and very devoted daughter. She’s never left your side unless the doctors have made her. She comes to see you several times a day and sing old folk songs to you while you sleep. She’s been waiting here for you tonight to take you to a room of your own until you can leave the hospital.”

Mama doesn’t seem to understand his words, but he injects his brand of magick into his tone of voice. She calms immediately, then blinks up at me as if suddenly realizing someone is standing over her.

“Mama?” she asks.

“Yes. You’re my mama.”

She gives her head the tiniest of shakes. “My mama. I’m sorry, Mama. I have missed you so much, so much. You were right about Buddy. I tried so many times to leave him but after what happened with Bobby, I knew he’d never let me. He said I’d go to jail and then who would protect Lauren?”

I stare at her, then up at Virgil. She didn’t do anything to Bobby. She wasn’t even there.

“Visualizing?” I mouth the word to Virgil. Is my mom seeing her own mother, here to escort her home?

“Just go with it,” Virgil mouths back. “She thinks you’re her mother.”

I remember my mother’s mother only from my long-ago childhood and from meeting her on the astral plane in the ritual with Virgil where she greeted me in the middle of our circle and showed me the pain of my mom’s passivity and domestic violence victimhood. Even though I’m close now to her age when she died, I look younger now than she did in the brief years I knew her. I’ve seen old photographs of her in her thirties and early forties, and I do bear a strong resemblance to my grandmother then, especially when I pull my hair back in a messy bun like tonight.

“It’s okay, Emma. I’m going to walk you to your new room, okay?” I slip her hand again into mine as the gurney stops at an elevator entrance. “Okay, Emma?”

“I’m sorry, Mama,” she says, closing her eyes. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you.”

I swallow hard. I know enough after my ritual with Grandma to understand better. “It’s okay, my sweet Emma. I knew what was in your heart. Even when you couldn’t be there for yourself, I was always there for you.”

Her entire body relaxes under my absolution by proxy.

The elevator dings, and Virgil guides the gurney inside, a few steps at a time. He’s a psychopomp, a death doula, a deathwalker, though each term comes with its own nuances. I know in my heart that these steps tonight are only the first of his steps to “walk home” my beloved mother.

We are barely inside the elevator before a nurse’s aide rounds the corner, her cushioned white shoes squealing against the floor as she spots us. I don’t know who she is, but I do recognize her. Too often over the last three weeks, I’ve seen her lingering in the hallways and occasionally peeking into the ICU waiting room. She never says hello, or otherwise acknowledges me, but as soon as she sees me, she’s busily punching at her phone’s screen and then is gone within seconds.

Beside me in the elevator, Virgil locks his gaze with hers. Without flinching, he presses the button to close the door. For as calm as he is outwardly, I can read the panic in his energy. Just a blip, but it’s there.

“Fallon’s friend?” I whisper.

With a curt nod, he jabs his thumb hard into the elevator button again and holds it there.

“Wait!” Shoes pounding against the tile, the nurse’s aide bolts toward us, but the elevator doors shut an inch shy of her fingertips.

Virgil and I exchange glances as the elevator drops quickly. The aide, somewhere in the corridor outside the ICU waiting room, pounds on the elevator doors.

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