“Oh,” she said. “You’re back.”
Not hello. Not welcome home.
I looked past her. Three unfamiliar cars filled the driveway. A man in gym clothes crossed the upstairs hallway carrying a towel.
“Where’s Mom?”
Vanessa folded her arms. “Basement.”
I thought I had heard wrong.
“What?”
“She sleeps downstairs now. The upstairs rooms are for people who pay.”
The basement door was beside the kitchen. I headed down without removing my shoes.
Mom was asleep on a narrow cot beside the furnace, wrapped in a winter coat even though it was June. There was no real bedroom, only storage shelves, detergent boxes, and an old lamp. Her prescription bottles sat on a folding chair.
Her face was thinner than it had appeared on our video calls. The camera had always been framed tightly, never showing the room. I suddenly understood why Vanessa insisted Mom was “too tired” whenever I asked her to walk around the house with the phone.
