“I’m here to see my mother, Sharon Healy. Is she all right?”
The woman assures me my mother is in good hands. She takes my name, gives me a visitor’s sticker, and sends me around the corner to wait. I sit below a television turned to the news and pick up a Redbook magazine from last winter. Five Easy Fifteen-Minute Dinners for Weekday Nights. I put it down, unable to concentrate.
I keep looking at my phone, willing Krystle to call. A crack of thunder makes me jump in my seat. A young woman sitting across from me tenderly holding her arm gives me a wan smile.
At this moment, Cole and Caitlin may be driving over the Bay Bridge on their way to the Eastern Shore. The first time I crossed the massive steel-and-concrete arc, I almost had a panic attack. The drive was endless, and though the bright blue Chesapeake spreading out on either side was beautiful, I was filled with visions of the car hurtling off the bridge into the water.
I hate the idea of Cole driving over it in this storm. Have they crossed yet? Did they stop somewhere to wait out the rain? I want to call Caitlin, but I don’t dare. Nor can I call Mark after this morning. There’s only one call Mark would want from me, one confirming that I will meet him at Bridgeways this afternoon.
My phone rings, jolting me out of my thoughts.
“Hi, Allie,” Barb DeSoto says. “Is this a good time to talk?”
I almost laugh at the question, but I answer yes.
“I know this isn’t what you want to hear, but now that there’s a criminal investigation into the mortgage on the house, we’re going to bow out. At least until things have been resolved.”
“I understand.” And I do understand. She has a business to run, and we cannot sell a house under these conditions. Still, it is confirmation that the reverse mortgage is more than just a wrench in the works. It’s a complete disaster. I may never get that money back.
I panic, realizing that if I get arrested, I’ll be leaving behind a huge mess. Who will deal with Sharon and the Westport house? Krystle?
“Please get back in touch with us once you’ve cleared all this up,” Barb says. “I am sorry. We always knew this would be a tough one. The house had a whole host of issues to overcome even before this—being a rental property for so long, the dilapidated condition, and the ridiculously low price your mother paid for it back in 2005—”
“My mother didn’t buy it,” I interject. “It was an inheritance.”
“I’m sure I saw in the records that she bought it for some nominal fee, something like twenty dollars. Wait, hold on, I have the deed right here.” I can hear her shuffling papers in the background. “She was probably just using the word inheritance loosely. It’s a pretty common way to pass a house down to a relative. Here we go—she purchased it for the grand sum of five dollars from Margaret Cooper.”
I look up to see a woman in purple scrubs scowling at me. “Can’t you read?” she hisses, pointing to a sign on the wall: No Cell Phone Use Permitted in Waiting Room.
I say goodbye quickly and put my phone on vibrate. The nurse, satisfied, walks away muttering under her breath about selfishness.
Margaret Cooper. I know that I’ve heard that name before, and I don’t think it was in connection with the Westport house. Then I remember—that was the name of the woman Sharon said had come into her room and tried to hurt her.
If that was the name of the great-aunt who left my mother the Westport house, then Sharon must have experienced a dementia-induced episode where she thought her late aunt visited her.
I was unaware of the details of my mother inheriting the house until it was all over. At the time, I never learned the name of the relative who left it to Sharon, and there was no one else to ask. The whole thing happened while I was in San Francisco, and my mother was never very forthcoming about the details. All I knew was that an elderly aunt had died, one whom my mother had never mentioned, whom we had never met, and who had no other living relatives. That was all Sharon ever said when I pressed her. That wasn’t unusual for my mother; she could be as tight-lipped as a Cold War spy when she wanted to be.
I guess that aunt must have been named Margaret Cooper. A quick search on my phone brings up nothing useful. The world abounds with Margaret Coopers. What had my mother said about that imaginary visit? It had something to do with Krystle, but I can’t recall what exactly.
“Alexis Ross?” I look up to see a man in a white coat adjusting his glasses. “Dr. Ahmed.”
He doesn’t offer his hand or lead me to a more private place to talk but launches immediately into an emotionless recitation of my mother’s condition.
“Your mother is in stable condition after ingesting a substantial amount of ethylene glycol. Not that any amount of ethylene glycol is safe for ingestion, but—”
“I’m sorry to interrupt, but what is ethylene glycol?”
His brown eyes widen behind his round glasses. “It’s the main component in antifreeze.”
“Antifreeze?” The word sends a chill through me. “Where the hell did she get antifreeze?”
He shrugs. “At the levels found in her, she is lucky to be alive. She was found unconscious and convulsing this morning. We have stabilized her, but we need to run some further tests and to keep an eye on her. Her heart rate was quite
