She walked out of the hotel lobby, into the cold air. She looked down at the tablet in her hand, the screen reflecting the pale silver moonlight.
By eight the next morning, the silver moonlight was gone, replaced by the yellow glare of the overhead bulb in Evelyn’s small kitchen.
Mara sat opposite her mother, her fingers smudged with gray dust from the heavy cardboard storage box they had dragged down from the attic stairs.
Between them lay three manila folders, their metal prongs rusted to a dull orange that left dry flakes on the white oilcloth table.
The smell of damp garden soil still clung to Evelyn’s cardigan from her walk to the trash bins earlier that morning.
Mara crossed her arms tightly over her chest, her eyes scanning the handwritten log of Evelyn’s appointments from seventeen years ago.
“There is a gap here,” Mara said, pointing to a blank line between the August check-up and the September admission.
Evelyn rubbed her left ring finger where her wedding band used to sit, the skin there still pale and slightly indented after all these years.
