“Here’s the Realtor I’ve been talking to. Call her. Tell her to get the ball rolling.”
Helen regarded her with dismay. “You were already planning to sell and move home? Without even discussing it with me?”
“I knew you’d try to talk me out of it,” her mother replied succinctly. Her expression brightened and even her color improved. “Now you can see how it’s all working out for the best.”
Helen merely stared at her. If the idea hadn’t been so completely crazy, she might actually wonder if her mother weren’t happy about her broken hip. The next thing she knew Flo would be calling it a blessing in disguise.
Resigned, she sighed. “I guess I’d better start making calls. I’ll be back a little later.”
“Take your time,” Flo said cheerily. “I’m not going anywhere, at least not until you take me.”
Outside her mother’s room, Helen leaned against the wall and drew in several deep, calming breaths. She, the barracuda attorney, the master negotiator, had just been outmaneuvered by a wisp of a woman who couldn’t even get out of bed.
As Helen had anticipated, when she called home later that day, Erik was no help at all. If he’d voiced even one objection, she could have seized on it and told her mother no, then gone on a hunt for a rehab facility even if it turned out to be miles and miles from Serenity. In fact, Charleston would have been ideal.
Instead, Erik thought it was a great idea to have Flo living with them for a while. “It’ll be wonderful for our daughter to get to spend some real quality time with her grandmother. Extended family is important for kids.”
“Why don’t we just have your family move in, too?” Helen grumbled under her breath.
Erik chuckled. “Careful what you wish for,” he warned. “You’ll start giving me ideas.”
“Erik, you have no idea what Flo is like. She’s disorganized and unreliable.”
“All I know is that she raised an amazing daughter all on her own, so she can’t be all bad. Besides, she raves about my cooking.”
“How much adulation can you possibly need?” Helen inquired testily. “Your cooking gets rave reviews in magazines and newspapers all over the state. Why on earth do you need to bask in a few words of praise from my mother?”
Erik hesitated, then said, “Look, if you really don’t want to do this, why don’t you find a good facility for her.”
“Thank you!”
“Hold on,” he said. “Let me finish. You can do that, but it seems ridiculous to spend that kind of money when we have room for her here, and this is where she wants to be. It’s not going to be forever.”
Helen tried another approach. “She’ll need help, Erik. I can’t stay home from work now when I’m just getting back on track with my law practice.”
“We’ll hire a caregiver, a physical therapist, whatever she needs. I’ll make some calls today, get some people lined up.”
“What about moving her back to Serenity? I can’t spend days down here packing up her apartment.”
“It’s not likely to sell overnight, and she won’t need her furniture until we’ve found her a house or apartment here. Leave everything there. When the time comes, we’ll get movers to do the packing. I’ll even go down to supervise. You won’t have to lift a finger.”
“You have an answer for everything,” she groused.
“The same answers you would have if you weren’t so resistant to this whole idea.”
“Well, when our house is chaotic, don’t say I didn’t warn you,” she said.
“Nope, I definitely won’t be able to say that,” he replied so cheerfully Helen wanted to throttle him. “I love you. Talk to you later.”
“Hold it,” she commanded before he could hang up. “How am I supposed to get her up there? I doubt she’s able to maneuver well enough to fly.”
“Rent a car and let her rest in the backseat while you drive.”
The thought of listening to Flo criticize her driving for hours on end set Helen’s teeth on edge, but it was a reasonable alternative.
“Okay, fine,” she said glumly. “I’ll see you tomorrow night unless I deliberately drive off the road and drown us both in a swamp en route.”
“You won’t do that,” Erik said confidently.
“Don’t be too sure. She can get on my last nerve faster than a flea can pester a dog.”
“You have me and our baby girl to get home to,” he reminded her. “Put our picture up on the visor and glance at it whenever you’re trying to recall why you need to live.”
She smiled despite her sour mood. “That ought to do it,” she conceded. “I do love you, you know.”
“I know.”
“Even if you are a pain.”
“I prefer to think of myself as sane and reasonable.”
“And I’m not?”
“No comment, Counselor. See you tomorrow. Let me know what you need me to do on this end.”
Helen sighed and hung up. Obviously this move of her mother’s was going to happen whether she liked it or not. She might as well get with the program and make the best of it.
Ty was icing down his shoulder after his workout at The Corner Spa, when his cell phone rang. It was nearly ten at night. At this hour, a call was never good. He glanced at caller ID and saw it was his attorney, Jay Wrigley. That was even worse.
“Hey, Jay, what’s up?” he asked.
“We’ve got a problem, Ty,” he said.
Since his tone was ominous and Jay never over-reacted, Ty braced himself. “Is it my contract? Is the team balking at paying my salary because of my being on injured reserve?”
“No, those terms in the contract are airtight. It’s nothing like that.”
“What, then?”
“I had a call tonight from Dee-Dee.”
Ty sank down on a bench at the mention of Trevor’s mother. “What the hell did she want?”
It was the first time Dee-Dee had made contact since they’d finalized the custody agreement nearly two years ago. Even then, she’d sent the notarized papers by courier. She’d claimed that seeing Ty or Trevor would shake her resolve to do the right thing and let Ty raise their son.
“I’m not a hundred percent sure,” Jay said. “But I thought you ought to know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know what she wanted? She didn’t call just to chat, I’m sure of that.”
“I’m telling you, she never said. She rambled on about thinking about Trevor and missing him, but she didn’t ask about locating you. Look, I wouldn’t even have bothered you about this, but it was just so out of the blue after all this time, I thought you should know.”
“Was she drunk?”
“I don’t know her well enough to say. Actually, she sounded kind of sad, like a mom who was missing her little boy.”
Ty closed his eyes against the tide of fear washing over him. “Is there something we need to do?”
“She didn’t ask for anything. She didn’t make any threats or demands. There’s nothing to do. You might want to give Tom Bristol a heads-up about the call,” he said, referring to the family court lawyer who’d handled