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I kiss her, then focus on Dad as I run back to the my side of the truck. “It’s Shelby’s mom. She died tonight. At her house. Just now! I’m driving over there to help Shelby.”
Willow stands on the porch and waves to me. “Be safe!”
I give her a nod, back out like the car is on fire.
While I have my issues with Shelby, my mother-in-law was always a good woman with a lot of kindness in her heart. Maybe too few boundaries, but a stellar person. She lost her husband when Shelby was only ten, had to raise an only child on her own and maybe that’s why my Ex has some of the issues she has. She was given everything. Had to work for little. It’s not natural for a person to feel good about themselves when they haven’t earned what they have — at least that’s my belief.
It takes me a half-hour to get there when I’m not speeding, and twenty minutes when I am. Tonight it’s the latter. As I pull up, I find Shelby on the front porch waiting for me, shivering. I jump out of the car and she says, “Ben! I’m so scared! She’s cold, Ben. So cold!” I pull my Ex into my arms and she sobs, “What am I gonna do without my Mom?”
Losing her final parent and me in the same year. “I’m so sorry. Did you call 911?”
“The ambulance is on the way.” As the words fall from her shaking lips, we hear sirens and when I see it’s a police car, a fire truck, and an ambulance I’m glad she called me so she didn’t have to be alone with all this. No one should have to do that.
The cops let the medics ask questions first, and after they’re directed into the house to see her mom, the police are all business. “Can you tell us what happened here?”
“I walked out of the kitchen because I heard a thud and there was my mom on the hallway floor! I called out to her, and then I knelt beside her, shaking her, and then I felt her pulse and started crying my fucking eyes out! That’s what happened!”
I ask, “Is there a problem?” because of their cold, detached demeanors.
“We have to investigate when someone dies at home.”
Shelby blurts, “And at the hospitals too, right! You need to make sure they weren’t killed!”
“She watches a lot of television,” I mutter.
“It happens!”
The gurney rolls by, covered by a sheet. Shelby bursts into fresh tears and turns to me. The next half hour we answer questions after the ambulance declares her officially no longer of this world. The cops search the house, and say they’ll get back to Shelby when the official autopsy report comes back. They get our phone numbers, give her their card, and Shelby decides not to go to the hospital, sobbing, “What’s the point?”
After the last vehicle has left, we sit on the front porch in silence for a good ten minutes.
Finally I exhale, “You have a lot of planning to do now, I guess.”
“She had a grave paid for beside Dad.” Shelby whispers, staring off into the distance. “I know where she keeps the paperwork.”
“You’ll get the house now.”
“Don’t say that!”
I mutter, “Sorry.”
“I don’t want the fucking house. I want my mom!”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“I’ve been so selfish, Ben.”
I say nothing.
“I know I have been. Mom talked with me for a long time after I came back from your place last time. She said I should fight for custody but I told her everything and that…maybe I’m not meant to be a mom.” Shelby looks at me. “Not everyone is meant to be a mom.”
“That’s probably the least selfish thing you’ve ever said.”
She whispers, “Most self-aware thing, maybe,” adding a quieter, “I can’t believe she’s gone.”
“This is going to take time.”
“I’ve got a place in Atlanta already.”
