What Happened to the Bennetts(11)

Lucinda kept shaking her head. “What about my mother? Our friends? What do we tell them? We just vanish?”

“There can be no further communication—”

“No! Are you serious?”

“I’m sorry, but—”

“We don’t have to go, do we? You can’t make us, can you?”

Special Agent Kingston pursed his lips. “No. It’s your choice. You can choose to stay, but we strongly advise against doing so.”

“Then we’re not going,” Lucinda shot back.

“We’re totally not,” Ethan added, teary. “This is where we live.”

I rose. “Gentlemen, we need to talk this over.”

“As I said, time is of the—”

“We’re going to talk this over.” I held out a hand to Lucinda. “Honey?”





Chapter Six



I took my seat at the head of the kitchen table, and Lucinda and Ethan sat down in their chairs. The lamp glowed softly overhead, and the air still smelled of the garlic bread we had with a spaghetti dinner, another lifetime ago. Allison’s chair was empty, as it would be forever.

“Jason, do you believe this? It’s too much.” Lucinda shook her head, her face ashen. Her eyes were bloodshot and puffy. Her fine nose was red at the tip, and her nostrils swollen. Her face was heart-shaped, curving to a pointed chin, but she worried about the wrinkles in her forehead. I had never noticed them before tonight.

“No. It’s unreal, I know.” I took her hand across the table. “But I think we should go.”

“You do?” Lucinda’s eyes widened. “Really?”

“No!” Ethan cried out, teary. “Dad, please, no. Can’t we please stay? We can be careful. We’ll watch out. We can do it.”

My heart ached for him. “I know this isn’t what you want, or what we want. But it’s not safe to stay.”

“It is if we’re careful! It’s called ‘situational awareness,’ we learned about it in assembly!”

“It’s not that easy, Ethan.”

“But we have a burglar alarm. We never use it. We could start using it!”

“It’s not good enough. We didn’t get sensors on the windows, only the doors.” I had cheaped out, not that it mattered now.

“So we’ll get the sensors on the windows or whatever!”

“It’s not enough, buddy.”

“It is, we’ll be fine. I don’t want to go. It’s not fair!”

“I know it’s not.” I turned to Lucinda, who was trying not to cry, her lower lip trembling. “What do you say, honey?”

“I don’t know. I can’t decide, I can’t.” Lucinda wiped her eyes, biting her lip. I had never seen her so distraught, even after her sister Caitlin died. She looked worse than heartbroken. She looked broken.

“Let’s talk it out.” I squeezed her hand.

“I can’t decide so fast. They’re waiting.”

“It’s okay. Tell me what you’re thinking.”

Ethan touched her arm, anxious. “Mom, can’t we stay? Please? We live here!”

“I don’t know, honey,” Lucinda answered, then turned to me. “What about Mom? She has no one. I don’t want to leave her, but I don’t want us in danger.”

“I know.” I loved my mother-in-law, who suffered from Alzheimer’s and lived at Bay Horse, an assisted-living facility nearby.

Ethan interjected, “Mom, we’ll be okay if we just use the burglar alarm!”

“Buddy,” I said gently. “Let your mom and me talk. We know what you think and we know why.”

Ethan sniffled, wiping his eyes. “Okay, but it’s really not fair.”

Lucinda let go of my hand and placed her palms on the table. “I can’t leave my mother, just like that. I have to make sure they take good care of her. You know, you have to be there, on the scene.”

I knew what she meant. Lucinda was hands-on, a great daughter and mother. She visited her Mom twice a week, and when the kids were in elementary school, she was class mom and chaperoned on every field trip. She was the one who brought the orange slices and snacks after the games. She collected for the coach’s gifts, which somehow ended up costing me extra money.

“Her main nurse, Susan, is usually on top of things, but Marjorie, who comes on Monday and Wednesday, never gets it. If she doesn’t understand my mother, she pretends she doesn’t hear it.”

I knew my wife was right about that, too. Bay Horse was a great facility, but it wasn’t perfect. My mother-in-law’s care was paid for by her inheritance from my late father-in-law, though I had been truly staggered by the cost of assisted living in the Memory Care wing.

“Sometimes I think they’re mean to her just because she has money. They think her life was easy, but it wasn’t. It never has been. She always worked in my father’s office, she just didn’t get paid.” Lucinda’s face fell. “She would do anything for me and Caitlin. Remember how good she was when Caitlin got sick? She dropped everything.”

“Yes. So did you.” Both my mother-in-law and Lucinda had rallied to take care of Caitlin through her cancer treatments. “Well, family is always different.”