When we pulled into our driveway we passed Steve, who was getting out of his Hyundai in front of Scarlett’s house. He was carrying flowers, his usual, and wearing yet another tweedish, threadbare jacket with patches on the elbows. But this time I didn’t need Scarlett to point out the newest sign of Vlad’s emergence: boots. Not just regular boots either, but big, leather, clunky boots with a thick heel and buckles that I imagined must be clanking loudly with each step, although my window was up and I couldn’t hear them. Warrior boots, poking out from beneath his pants leg as if they’d just walked over the heads of dead opponents. He waved cheerfully as we passed, and my mother, still irritated, lifted her hand with her fake neighborhood wave.

We still hadn’t said a word to each other as we came into the kitchen where my father was on the phone, his back to us. As he turned around, I could tell instantly something was wrong.

“Hold on,” he said into the receiver, then covered it with his hand. “Julie. It’s your mother.”

She put down her purse. “What? What is it?”

“She fell, in her house—she’s hurt bad, honey. The neighbors found her. She’d been there for a while.”

“She fell?” My mother’s voice was high, shaky.

“This is Dr. Robbins.” He handed her the phone, adding, “I’ll use the other phone and start calling about flights.”

She took the phone from him, taking a deep breath as he squeezed her shoulder and headed down the hall, toward her office. I stood in the open doorway and held my breath.

“Hello, this is Julie Cooke.... Yes. Yes, my husband said ... I see. Do you know when this happened? Right. Right, sure.”

All this time, each word she said, she was looking right at me. Not like she was even aware of it or could see me at all. Just her eyes on me, steady, as if I was the only thing holding her up.

“My husband is calling about flights right now, so I’ll be there as soon as I can. Is she in pain? ... Well, of course. So the surgery will be tomorrow at six, and I’ll just—I’ll get there as soon as I can. Okay. Thanks so much. Good-bye.” She hung up the phone, turning her back to me, and then just stood there, one hand still on the receiver. I could see her tense back, the shoulder blades poking out.

“Your grandmother’s hurt,” she said in a low voice, still not turning around. “She fell and broke several ribs, and she’ll have to have surgery on her hip in the morning. She was alone for a long time before anyone found her.” She choked on this last part, her voice wavering.

“Is she gonna be okay?” Down the hall I could hear my father’s voice, asking questions about departures and arrivals, coach or first class, chances of standby. “Mom?”

I watched her shoulders fall and rise, one deep breath, before she turned around, her face composed and even. “I don’t know, honey. We’ll just have to see.”

“Mom—” I started, wanting to somehow fix this, whatever I’d opened between us by not wanting to share Macon with her. By not wanting to share me with her.

“Julie,” my father’s voice came booming from down the hall, always too loud for small spaces, “there’s a flight in an hour, but you have a long layover in Baltimore. It’s the best we can do, I think.”

“That’s fine,” she said evenly. “Go ahead and book it. I’ll throw a bag together.”

“Mom,” I said, “I just—”

“Honey, there’s no time,” she said quickly as she passed me, reaching to pat my shoulder, distracted. “I’ve got to go pack.”

So I sat on my bed, in my room, with my math homework in my lap and the door open. I heard the closet door opening and shutting, my mother packing, my father’s low, soothing voice. But it was the silences that were the worst, when I craned my neck, hoping for just one word or sound. Anything would have been better than imagining what was happening when everything was muffled, and I knew she had to be crying.

She came in and hugged me, ruffling my hair like she always had when I was little; she said not to worry, she’d call later, everything was okay. She’d forgotten about what I’d said, about what had happened at dinner. Just like that, with one phone call, she was a daughter again.

Chapter Eleven

With my mother gone, it was like I’d been handed a Get Out of Jail Free card. My father’s morning show was still riding an Arbitron rating high, which meant he was busy almost every afternoon or evening with promotional events. In the past few months, he’d already lost an on-air bet with the traffic guy that resulted in him having to perform an embarrassing (and thank God, not complete) striptease at a local dance club, attended about a hundred contest-winner cocktail parties, and wrestled a man named the Dominator at the Hilton for charity. That one had left him bruised, battered, and with nose splints for a full week, which he’d loved. He’d discussed his drainage problems, complete with a million booger jokes, every morning while I cringed on the way to school.

The phone rang constantly, usually a nervous-sounding man named Lottie who organized my father’s every waking moment, lining up another trip to the mall, meeting, or Wacky Stunt. My father, who my mother insisted was too old and too educated for any of this nonsense, hardly even saw me, much less kept careful track of what I was doing. At most, we passed each other late at night, as I walked past his bedroom to brush my teeth. We came to an unspoken understanding: I’d behave, show up when I was supposed to, and he wouldn’t ask questions. It was only four days, after all.