The boot prints in the wet soil between our driveways were too large to belong to Dorothy, and they stopped right at her basement window. I stood at my kitchen counter, chopping celery for a pot roast I knew she would only eat half of, while my mother’s voice buzzed through the phone speaker.
“She is eighty-three, Greta,” my mother said, her voice thin over the long-distance line from Florida.
I adjusted my wristwatch, sliding the leather strap up my arm where the skin was cold. “She still drives her Buick to the pharmacy, but she missed her Tuesday hair appointment today.”
“People miss appointments,” my mother said. “It does not mean she has stopped taking her pills.”
I wiped the celery knife on a dishtowel, watching the water pool around the sink drain. “She has lived next door to me for four years, and she has never missed a Tuesday. Not even when we had that ice storm two years ago.”
I was cutting the carrots now, making sure they were exactly the size she preferred, soft enough for her to chew without her dentures getting loose. I looked at the kitchen calendar on the wall, where every single Tuesday had a small hand-drawn star on it, marking our dinner night.
“She was leaning on the kitchen counter when I saw her yesterday,” I continued, scraping the chopped vegetables into the heavy iron pot. “She did not want to admit she was having trouble standing, but I could tell. Her left knee has been acting up since the weather turned cold.”
“Dorothy has her own family, Greta,” my mother said. “Or at least, she has that cousin in Ohio. You are not her daughter.”
“Her cousin has not visited since the Thursday before Easter,” I said. “I am the one who checks her mail. I am the one who knows she takes her blue pills in the morning and her yellow ones at night.”
“You are hovering again,” my mother said.
