My keys slipped from my fingers, clattering loudly against the floorboards.
Nobody in the living room seemed to hear them fall. The laughter grew louder, followed by a woman’s voice shouting a toast about the joys of early retirement.
I bent down to pick up my keys, my fingers brushing against a pair of silver-toed pumps that smelled strongly of damp leather.
The brass key was cold in my hand as I stood up.
I left my carry-on bag in the coat closet and stepped silently down the hallway toward the archway of the living room.
The space was completely transformed. Our minimalist furniture had been pushed against the walls to make room for four white rental tables, each covered in linen tablecloths and crowded with platters of food.
My mother, Carmen, was sitting in our velvet armchair at the center of the room. She was sixty-two, wearing a silk caress-style dress that I had never seen, and she was currently rubbing her right knee with dramatic, slow circular motions while laughing with a group of women.
“And of course, Zayden insists on the best for me,” Carmen said, her voice carrying that familiar, sugary sweet tone she used when she wanted to impress strangers. “He told me, Mother, you deserve a luxury high-rise, not some cheap retirement home back east.”
A woman in a yellow dress nodded, holding a silver platter piled high with small crab cakes. The platter was our heavy, sterling silver heirloom piece that Jessica’s grandmother had left her, usually kept locked in the dining room hutch.
I counted at least twenty women in the room, all of them drinking white wine from our crystal glasses. I did not recognize a single face.
I looked toward the hallway that led to the bedrooms, expecting to see Jessica or Olivia. The door to Carmen’s room was closed, and I remembered the heavy brass lock I had installed on her bottom dresser drawer last week at her urgent request.
She had claimed she needed to secure her private medical documents from the cleaning staff.
