“A Realtor?” I asked, my voice ratcheting up. “Why? Are you and dad selling the house?” While I hadn’t lived at home in nearly a decade, that house safely held my history and the thought of them selling it made me anxious.
Mom waved her hand around, her bangle bracelets jangling. “Of course not,” she said. “Just keeping our options open. So, what do you think about meeting Alexis for a late lunch?”
“Sure. Maybe,” I replied, though my plan was to stay put here at home until my memory fixed itself. “I’m a bit tired, though.”
Concern flitted across her face and she frowned. “Of course you are, sweetie. This has been quite a...um, transition.”
Dad came out of the bedroom, fastening the Rolex watch he wore daily that Mom had gifted him for his fiftieth birthday. Now nearing sixty, Dad looked a decade younger and still taught political science at the University of Toronto. He hated being asked when he planned to retire, like many of my parents’ friends had, because he claimed to have no intention of ever quitting teaching. “Those kids keep me young,” he would say, referring to his university students. “Retiring is the fast track to the grave.”
“I’m going to spend the day at the house,” he said to Mom and me. “Fix that leaky faucet in the master bathroom and touch up the paint in the front hall before tonight’s class.” Those certainly sounded like tasks one did to get a house ready to sell...
“Good. Yes,” Mom said. “I’ll stay here with Lucy.”
“You don’t have to, Mom. Stop fretting, okay? You’re wrinkling with all that frowning.”
Mom ran her fingers across her forehead as if trying to smooth the worry away, then smiled and patted my cheek. “Sweetheart, I am your mother and it’s my job to worry. And these things?” She pressed a finger to the space between her eyebrows and rubbed vigorously. “These are my well-earned love lines.”
“Barbara, have you eaten anything yet?” Dad asked, glancing at Mom’s insulin pump monitor clipped to the front of her leggings.
“I’m fine, Hugh,” Mom replied, annoyance coloring her tone. Dad held up a hand in surrender and I caught his eye, both of us thinking Mom’s blood sugar was probably low. She got snappy when it dropped.
But Mom recovered quickly, her smile bright and irritation seemingly gone as she took the tea back from me. “I’m going to put the kettle on and call Alexis, find out about lunch. Sound good?”
“Maybe breakfast first, Mom?”
“Oh, not you, too,” she muttered good-naturedly. “Fine. Breakfast. I’ll make my famous pancakes and bacon.” Then she saw the look on my face, which was probably a confusing mix of longing and disgust. “Oh, right, you’re not eating bacon.”
Along with the strangeness of forgetting Matt my boyfriend and remembering Daniel my husband, I also woke from the coma believing I was a vegetarian, among other small and apparently out-of-character changes. So even though bacon sounded appealing, a louder voice inside my head shouted I did not eat animals. Even ones disguised as delicious, crispy breakfast food.
“Okay, how about oatmeal? Does Matt like steel-cut?”
Another thing I had no idea about. I shrugged, feeling all at once useless like I had earlier with the coffee fiasco.
“I’m sure he does,” she said, her tone soothing. “Back in a jiffy.”
I sat beside Dad on the couch and he set a hand on my knee, patting it a couple of times. “So how are you feeling this morning, kiddo?” His graying, bushy eyebrows rose with the question. The skin on his arms seemed darker than normal, especially for the time of year. He and Mom weren’t the snowbird types—they liked the cold, and Dad often said shoveling kept his core and arms as strong as when he was thirty years younger.
“Good. Better.” My now-standard response. I gestured to his arms, bared from the biceps down because of his short-sleeved golf shirt. “Hey, why are you so tanned?”
He looked at his arms, holding them out. “Am I?”
“Your arms are for sure,” I said. “Were you guys away somewhere?”
“No,” he replied. “Lots of walking outside lately. Plenty of good vitamin D sunshine this winter.”
I nodded and was about to ask the obvious—how one’s arms got tanned in minus-twenty-degree weather when coats were a requirement—when a pot clanged loudly from the kitchen, followed by a long string of curse words. “Mom okay today?”
“She’s fine,” he said. “You know how she gets when her sugar drops.” But then he looked pained, realizing his blunder.
“I know,” I said, nudging him with my shoulder. “I remember, Dad.”
He smiled, relieved. “She’ll be better after that oatmeal.”
“So, Mom says you’re meeting a Realtor this morning. What about?”
He opened his mouth, then closed it and shook his head. “Nothing for you to worry about, pumpkin.”
Telling someone not to worry about something was a great way to ensure she would do just that. “Dad, what’s going on?”
“Your mother and I are considering a few changes.”
“What sort of changes?” I asked.
Dad patted at my knee again. “There’s a house a few streets over your mother has had her eye on. So we thought we’d see what we could get for our place. The market is excellent right now. Quite excellent.”
“That’s it? You might move a few streets over? Why don’t you repaint the house or update the kitchen instead?”
Dad slapped his palms against his thighs as he stood. “All good ideas, sweet pea,” he replied. “I’d best get going. Tell your mom I’ll call her after the meeting.” He leaned over to kiss my cheek, told me not to bother getting up.
“Go easy on yourself and remember what the doctor said. This is going to be a long process. Rome wasn’t built in a day.”
“I know.” I smiled at the pithy remark he was so fond of. “I’ll take it easy. Promise.”
As he left and the front door clicked shut behind him, I felt a vibration from inside my sweatshirt pocket. Thanks to the lingering effects from the concussion, I was supposed to be “screen free” but had so far been noncompliant. Like many in my generation, living without my phone felt akin to going through life blindfolded.
The vibration signaled a text from my sister: all caps and begging me to take away our mother’s phone. Obviously Mom had called Alex about lunch, my sister picking up only because she thought it might be about me, and was now holding her hostage with rambling chitchat. Our mother was not good at taking cues someone wanted off the phone.
One might think Mom and Alexis would get along brilliantly, both of them free-spirited and artistically minded—Mom had been a high school art teacher, who now dabbled with acrylic classes out of her home studio. But there had been plenty of explosive arguments between them over the years, the similarities not enough to dispel the oil and water quality of their relationship. I quickly texted Alex back, Be nice, and then clicked through to my email.
A few Welcome home! Hope you’re doing great. We miss you! emails from my team at Jameson Porter, and one from Brooke Ingram, my second in command and closest work friend (outside of Matt). She had sent me a card in the hospital that read “At least it’s not syphilis. Get well soon,” which had made me laugh hard enough to cry and told you everything you needed to know about Brooke. Today’s email was a running checklist of outstanding communications projects, which I’d asked her to send daily to keep me in the loop for when I went back to work.
Of course,