Every time the phone rang, I jumped out of my skin. It was never Alexis, or her mother, or Morrison’s. Or Jake. As if.It was either Grandma or about Grandma.At five o’clock it was Mrs. Philips calling to say Grandma was wandering again. After that call, Mom fired the aide and Grandma spent the night at our house.I did not give her the perfume. It seemed tainted. I was afraid it would burn through her skin. I put the bottle in one of my desk drawers.After dinner, I helped Mom get Grandma in the den, put her to bed on the pull-out couch. When Mom bent down and kissed Grandma on the cheek, Grandma said, “You are such a good daughter.”And it hit me so hard, in my gut, sharp like horses’ hooves, what a terrible, terrible, horrible thing I had done.Even what Alexis did to me—if she really did it—cannot justify what I did to her. And to her mother.After all they’ve been through. After all we’ve meant to each other. You don’t just turn off a friendship like a faucet of scalding water.The epiphany I had at that moment was that I have to make it right.
