Little Sister by Lana Wood

Author:Lana Wood [Wood, Lana]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dey Street Books
Published: 2021-09-21T00:00:00+00:00

7

“It was the last time we ever spoke.”

Our move to Thousand Oaks was working out well.

The house was perfect. It was comfortable. We each had our own bedroom where we could disappear for some much-needed, long-overdue privacy. It was big enough that we weren’t bumping into each other every time we turned around anymore. And instead of vanishing into thin air every month, our rent checks were going toward the down payment. The thought of being a homeowner seemed almost too good to be true, particularly with Evan’s expecting her and Eddie’s first child.

Eddie and I both had full-time jobs, so it was a big help that Evan, at her own insistence, was in charge of running the household, from bookkeeping to chores to errands.

Mom liked having a bedroom of her own again, but in general she was getting more unpredictable and harder to manage by the day. It was exasperating, and it was heartbreaking. She’d draw all over the furniture with lipstick. She’d flush her diapers down the toilet and clog up the plumbing. She’d have irrational delusions, like she did the afternoon Evan and I decided to go to Marie Callender’s to pick up a pie for dinner. Mom still loved going places, and we thought she’d leap at the invitation to go with us. But no, not this time. She didn’t just not want to go, she said she couldn’t go.

The reason?

“Because the dead children are in the bathroom.”

By then I’d learned the hard way not to argue with her or try to reason with her and convince her that she was mistaken, there were no dead children in the bathroom. It only frustrated both of us and got us nowhere. It saved a lot of time and emotional energy to just play along.

“The dead children will be fine,” I promised her, never having dreamed that sentence would ever come out of my mouth. “We’ll just close the bathroom door on our way out.”

That satisfied her. She picked up her purse, and off we went. She seemed to be enjoying herself until we parked in front of Marie Callender’s, when she stubbornly refused to get out of the car and come inside with us. Evan and I weren’t going to be gone long, so we left her there, went in without her, picked up our pie, and came back out maybe twenty minutes later to find a strange, very upset woman standing beside my car, accompanied by a police cruiser and a couple of uniformed cops.

It seems that while we were inside, Mom had started yelling for help. The woman heard her and hurried over to check on her, and Mom grabbed her through her open window and cried, “Please help me! I’ve been here for two days!”

The woman, understandably concerned, called 911, and the cops were there in no time. It wasn’t quick or easy, and I was picturing myself being hauled away in handcuffs for elder abuse, but we finally got things straightened out, I thanked the woman and the cops, and we all left, with Mom wondering what the fuss was about.

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