“Another visit?” I asked one afternoon when she grabbed her keys.
“She shouldn’t be alone.”
I squeezed her shoulder.
I assumed almost losing her mother had changed something.
Maybe mortality had softened whatever had happened between them.
Then came Saturday.
Dorothy stood by the front door with Nancy.
“Mom keeps asking for her,” she explained. “I thought we’d try to cheer her up.”
Nancy held up a folded piece of construction paper.
“I made Grandma a card.”
“She’s going to love it.”
I kissed Nancy’s forehead.
Then Dorothy’s cheek.
“Drive safely.”
“We won’t be too late.”
Dorothy caught the door before it closed and smiled at me.
I trusted that smile completely.
Around nine that evening, my phone buzzed.
My cousin Jason.
“Mark, am I crazy, or is this Nancy? That girl is her spitting image.”
Below the message was a photograph.
I opened it.
My stomach dropped.
Nancy was at a concert.
Not a hospital.
She had her arms wrapped around a man’s neck.
He looked roughly Dorothy’s age in the photograph because of his thick beard, and he was holding Nancy as though he’d known her forever.
Then Jason sent another message.
“It’s definitely her. She’s been with this guy the whole concert.”
That made even less sense.
Nancy was shy.
At school events, she sometimes hid behind me when unfamiliar parents tried talking to her.
She didn’t hug strangers.
She certainly didn’t wrap herself around them while singing.
I called Dorothy.
No answer.
Again.
Nothing.
By the time she finally picked up, I was already holding my car keys.
“Where are you?”
Silence.
“Dorothy?”
“Mark, please don’t jump to conclusions.”
My stomach tightened.
“Jason just sent me a picture of Nancy at a concert with some man.”
Nothing.
“You told me you were at the hospital.”
“Mark—”
“Who is he?”
“I can’t explain this properly over the phone.”
“Try.”
“Please. Just wait for us.”
“Us?”
Another pause.
“We’ll be home around ten.”
Then she said something that made everything worse.
“You’ll meet him.”
I gripped the phone.
“Meet who?”
“Please. We’ll explain everything when we get there. It’s not what you’re imagining.”
She hung up.
I put down my keys.
