Can't Get Enough (Skyland, #3)(2)

There is nothing reassuring about this answering silence.

Beep! Beep! Beep!

The smoke detector blares, breaking the quiet and jarring me from my stupor. White clouds billow into the hall, and I race to the kitchen. Plumes of smoke stream from a hissing pan on the stove. The acrid scent of something burning floods the air and stings my nose.

Shit!

Coughing, I rush past a mound of flour in the center of the kitchen floor, fumbling through the drawers where Mama always keeps dish towels. Wrapping one around the handle, I drag the pan away from the angry red burner. The pan sizzles when it hits the sink, a curtain of steam rising into the air and almost blurring—but not quite—the sight of raw chicken parts, chopped vegetables, half-formed piecrusts, and sloppily sliced fruit littering the counter.

What the…

Lifting the pan lid reveals collard greens, or what’s left of them. All the water boiled out and the charred mass is stuck to the bottom. I wrench open the oven door, and my nose wrinkles at the scorched, withered mess that may have been a ten-pound turkey in its previous life. Grabbing a second dish towel, I pull the smoking mess from the oven and plop it onto the range.

The smoke detector keeps squawking, so I stretch to vigorously wave my hands back and forth in front of the blinking alarm until it quiets. The silence that follows is even worse. With the immediate emergency of burning food addressed, I’m forced to deal with the bigger problem.

Where’s Mama?

“Ms. Catherine,” I say with sudden realization.

How many times has Mama walked over to our next-door neighbor’s house while her food simmered and baked? That has to be where she is. I sprint out the back door to the fence that divides our yards, pushing impatiently at the wobbly gate that is never locked between the two houses. I charge up the cobblestone path Mama’s closest friend laid through her garden, absently noting the frost-covered bushes sure to bloom in spring. I bang on the door.

“Ms. C,” I call, tugging on the metal handle. The door doesn’t budge. I go around front and ring the doorbell, but no one answers. Face pressed to the window, I’m disturbed by the quality of the darkened room I peer into. The stillness is stale like nothing has stirred in a long time inside.

“Hendrix? That you?”

I turn on the porch and frown at Mrs. Mayer, the neighbor from across the street Mama and Ms. Catherine never could tolerate.

“Gossipy, is what she is,” Mama used to say. “Couldn’t keep a secret if it was sewed in her jaws.”

“Mrs. Mayer.” I walk down the steps to meet her at the fence she’s peering over. “Have you seen Mama or Ms. Catherine?”

The papier-m?ché of her finely wrinkled skin creases with a series of emotions—surprise, dismay, sadness.

“I saw your mother earlier when I was out walking.” Meaning snooping. “But I haven’t seen her in a few hours. And Catherine, well…”

Her eyes drop to the grass and then lift, surprising me with their wetness.

“Well, Catherine passed. We buried her two weeks ago. You didn’t know?”

My head spins and my fingers shake as I grip the fence for support.

“What do you mean…” I grapple for words, but can’t form a coherent thought. It’s not possible my mother’s best friend died two weeks ago and I didn’t know. “She… died? How?”

“Heart attack.” Mrs. Mayer shakes her head, letting her gaze drift over to Ms. Catherine’s front porch. “Your mama didn’t take it well, as I’m sure you can imagine.”

I’ve been out of the country for work, but Mama and I spoke several times over the last few weeks, and most of those times she seemed lucid and pretty close to her usual self. In none of those conversations did Ms. Catherine’s death come up. We talked yesterday to confirm my flight time. I make sure to come home at least once a month, twice if I can, but work has slammed me hard recently. I called Ms. Catherine a couple of times last week and got voice mail, but that has happened before. She always calls back.

Not this time.

“I can’t believe Betty didn’t tell you,” Mrs. Mayer says, her look shifting from mournful to speculative. “I wondered why you weren’t at the funeral.”

“I… yeah, I…” There’s no answer for it. I refuse to give this woman more information that’s none of her business.

“So is Betty missing?” Her gaze sharpens, snaps to our back door, which, in my haste, I left open. A few tendrils of smoke straggle from the kitchen into the early evening air.

“No, not missing. Not home. I just got in from Atlanta and wondered if you’d seen her. I’m sure she’s out running some last-minute errands or something.”

“But her car’s in the garage,” Mrs. Mayer states. “She wouldn’t walk to the grocery store.”

“I need to go, Mrs. Mayer.” I turn abruptly and don’t wait for her to acknowledge the dismissal. “Merry Christmas.”

“Let me know when you find her,” she calls.

My steps stutter at the word “find,” but I speed-walk back into our house.

Mama’s missing.

When we first got the Alzheimer’s diagnosis, of course the doctors told us wandering was a possibility, but it’s not something we’ve had to deal with much before. Not like this. I need to call the police. I have no idea how long she’s been gone, where she might be. I knew the situation here wasn’t sustainable. It was patched and Band-Aided until we could figure out a long-term solution, and Ms. Catherine was the glue barely holding it all together. But she’s gone now, and Mama’s missing. An icy rivulet of fear runs down my spine, and I’m paralyzed. I—who always know what to do, where to go, what the next step should be—stand frozen in place with a sinking sense of dread and awful knowing. My throat closes around a sob, choking it into a whimper. I blink at the tears gathering in my eyes and swipe them.