“Where on earth did you find this?”
“You know our Emma. She doesn’t throw anything away. I had her overnight it.”
Boop smoothed away the remaining tissue paper but didn’t lift the fabric.
“Pop shouldn’t have given it to us.”
“Emma had it cleaned. It looks like new, but it’s the real thing. Do you want me to unfold it for you?”
Boop laid her hands atop the cool satin, the hills and valleys of the embroidery caressing her palms. She shook her head. “Not yet.”
“You should own all pieces of your life, good or bad,” Hannah said. “They make up who you are.”
With her uncertain relationship and delicate condition, Hannah was brave, not afraid of the truth.
Boop could learn a lot from her granddaughter.
Betty closed her hands into fists, not as a show of anger, but as a way to garner strength. “Do you mean that?”
“Of course I do.”
“Then I want you to find out about Abe. Even if it’s an obituary, I want to know.”
“Are you sure?”
Boop needed certainty, even if that didn’t come with answers. “I’m sure. And there’s one more thing that’s nonnegotiable.”
“What?”
“After you drop me off to see Georgia, don’t stop driving till you’re home. It’s time for answers for both of us.”
It was no accident that Boop’s purple cane coordinated with her lavender tunic—not that she had ever needed an excuse to accessorize. Not only did Boop need the cane to help her navigate the grid of hallways that comprised Lighthouse Rehab, but she also needed the fashion to avoid being mistaken for a patient. Boop walked slowly and deliberately, using the cane to keep her steady and also to alleviate some pressure. She headed up one corridor and down the next, past rows of wheelchairs and a small collection of walkers with tennis balls stuck onto their feet.
Boop didn’t yet need either of those contraptions. She was grateful to be getting old. To be old. She had outlived Marvin and most of her friends. The fact that Georgia and Doris were still alive was an anomaly, she knew that, and didn’t want to take it for granted, waste it, or have regrets. If Boop had been a Catholic, she would have crossed herself, but instead she just stared ahead and continued with the confidence and purpose of a visitor on a mission.
Georgia needed her.
And she needed Georgia. No matter what she did or didn’t do, Georgia was family. Boop didn’t turn her back on family.
Boop stopped and checked her reflection in the glass of a framed generic floral print. She’d had a similar ritual every day before stopping to see Marvin in the nursing home. Even when he didn’t recognize her, Boop had always insisted on recognizing herself.
A few moments later, with anger set aside—perhaps shoved aside—and her tote bag behind her back, Boop stood against the open door. Georgia lay back in bed against a stack of pillows. She was dressed in a zipped peach terry-cloth housecoat, though it wasn’t even six o’clock. Her hair was combed but not styled. She looked paler than usual, smaller too. How could that be? It’d just been a few days. Weren’t they feeding her?
Georgia looked at Boop and smiled. “I wasn’t sure I’d see you again.”
“Me either.” Boop smiled. “You look awful.”
Georgia ran her hand over her hair and laughed. “I do, don’t I?”
Boop stepped inside. The space was less crowded than a hospital room. Though the bed still had sidebars, there were no monitors, machines, or IV poles. A TV protruded from the wall on a metal arm. There were three institutional-yet-padded chairs, a small dresser, a nightstand, and two wide windows with vertical blinds that let in the remaining summer daylight. Without a word, Boop set a paperback on the bedside table next to a stack of sealed Jell-O cups, and then sat in the chair by the foot of Georgia’s bed.
“You should tell them you don’t like green Jell-O,” Boop said.
“Does anyone like green Jell-O?”
Years ago, Boop would have slurped it down without a spoon, simply because it was forbidden. As soon as she and Marvin had agreed they wouldn’t keep a kosher home, Boop learned the fine art of making fruit-and-marshmallow Jell-O salads and colorful, layered Jell-O molds.
“What does the doctor say?” she asked Georgia.
“That I’ll be here two to four weeks, depending.”
Georgia would recover. Maybe she’d get out early for good behavior, as if it were a prison. Boop wiggled herself up straight and tall in the chair. “And then what?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know? They’re just going to push you to the lobby and tell you not to let the door hit you on the way out? There has to be a plan.”
There were two things Georgia always had: a plan—and a backup plan.
“My only plan is to apologize again. And to make it up to you, if I can. Can you forgive me?”
“I wouldn’t be here if I couldn’t.”
Georgia sniffled and inhaled so deeply her whole body expanded. Then she cried.
Though the betrayal would stick to Boop like a burr, relentless and prickly, she’d continue to pluck it off each time she noticed it.
“None of that,” Boop said, handing Georgia a tissue.
“I’m just so grateful to get a second chance.”
“You need more than that—you need a place to heal and rest when they’re finished with you.”
“I’ll go home. I’m sure I can get some of my friends to help. I can hire someone.”
“You’ll do no such thing. You’re coming home with me.”
Georgia couldn’t go back to Boca, where she had no family. Boop was her family. Her plans to move would have to wait until Georgia was literally back on her feet. “We’ll set up the TV room as your bedroom and you’ll stay as long as you need.”
Georgia placed her hand over her heart. “Are you sure?”
Boop nodded, her throat thick, her heart bursting with the memory of
