Someone Like Her

“Oh.” Once again she worried the lip, as if she often did. “I’m sorry. It’s just…the prognosis isn’t very good, I’m afraid. She’s in a coma.”

When he asked, she told him what had happened. That she’d been pushing her shopping cart across the highway, probably on her way to the Safeway store on the other side. The car that hit her had been going too fast, the police had determined, but she had likely been in her own world and hadn’t looked before starting across, either.

“She was sent flying twenty feet. The cart…” She swallowed. “It was flattened. Her things strewn everywhere. That was over a week ago. She hasn’t stirred since. There was swelling in her brain at first, of course, but they drilled into her skull to relieve it. Which sounds gruesome, but…”

He nodded jerkily. “I understand.”

“The thing is, until now it never occurred to any of us to try to find her family. I’m ashamed that it didn’t. We tried to take care of her, as much as she’d let us, but…She was just a fixture. You know? Now I wonder, if I’d pushed her—”

“If she didn’t know who she was, how could she tell you?”

“But she must have remembered something, or she wouldn’t have held on to those. Oh, and these rings.” She took them from the envelope and dropped them into his outstretched hand.

A delicate gold wedding band, and an engagement ring with a sizeable diamond. Undoubtedly his father’s choice. Adrian remembered it digging into his palm when he grabbed at his mother’s hand.

He wanted to feel numb. “She could have sold these.”

“It wasn’t just the rings she was holding on to,” Lucy said softly, her gaze on them. “She was holding on to who she was. On to you.”

“I haven’t heard from her in twenty-three years.” He felt sick and angry, and the words were harsh.

“Do you think she didn’t love you?”

He hated seeing the pity in her eyes. Jaw tightening, he said, “Let’s get back to facts. Where is she?”

“Middleton Community Hospital. Middleton’s not far off Highway 101, over the Hood Canal Bridge.”

He nodded, already calculating what he had to cancel. Of course, he’d want to transfer her to a Seattle hospital rather than leave her in the hands of a small-town doctor, but first he had to get over there and assess the situation.

“I was hoping you might come,” Lucy said.

Glancing at the clock, he said, “I’ll be there by evening. I have to clear my schedule and pack a few things.”

He saw the relief on her face, and knew she hadn’t been sure how he’d react. He might not be willing to drop everything and come running, had his mother walked out on her family for another man, say, or for mercenary reasons. As it was, he might never know why she’d gone, but it was clear she was mentally ill. His childish self had known she wasn’t quite like other mothers. Even then, she’d battled depression and a tendency to hear voices and see people no one else saw.

Schizophrenia, he’d guessed coldly as an adult, and still guessed. Her reasons for whatever she’d done were unlikely to make sense to anyone but her. There might be nothing he could do for her now, but she was his obligation and no one else’s.

He rose to his feet. “You can tell her doctor to expect me.”

She nodded, thanked him rather gravely, and left, apparently satisfied by the success of her errand.

He called Carol and told her to cancel everything on his book for the rest of the week. Then, with practiced efficiency, he began to pack his briefcase. Hospital visiting hours would be limited. Once he’d seen the doctor, he could get plenty done in his hotel room.

CHAPTER TWO

ADRIAN HAD NEVER taken a journey during which he’d been less eager to reach his destination.

Instead of turning on his laptop to work while he waited in line for the ferry, he brooded about what awaited him in Middleton.

He knew one thing: other people besides Lucy Peterson would be looking at him with silent condemnation as they wondered how a man misplaced his mother.

Yeah, Dad, how did you lose her?

Or had he discarded her? In retrospect, Adrian had often wondered. He loved his grandparents, but he hadn’t wanted to spend an entire summer in Nova Scotia without his mother. Some part of him had known she needed him. Years later, as he grew older, he’d realized that his father had arranged the lengthy visit so that no fiercely protective little boy would be around to object or ask questions when Elizabeth was sent away.

Supposedly she’d gone to a mental hospital. His father had never taken Adrian to visit, probably never visited himself. Perhaps a year later he’d told Adrian that she had checked herself out of the hospital.

With a shrug, he said, “Clearly, she didn’t want to get well and come home. I doubt we’ll ever hear from her again.”

Subject dismissed. That was the last said between them. The last that ever would be said; his father had died two years ago in a small plane crash.

Adrian moved his shoulders to release tension. Let the good citizens of Middleton stare; he didn’t care what they thought. He was there to claim his mother, that was all.

What if he didn’t recognize her? If he gazed at the face of this unconscious woman and couldn’t find even a trace of the mother he remembered in her?

Ask for DNA testing, of course, but was that really what worried him? Or did his unease come from a fear that he wouldn’t recognize her on a more primitive level? Shouldn’t he know his mother? What if he saw her and felt nothing?

He grunted and started the car as the line in front of him began to move. God knows he hadn’t felt much for his mother. Why would he expect to, for a woman he hadn’t seen in twenty-three years?

Usually, he would have stayed in his car during the crossing and worked. But his mood was strange today, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to concentrate. Instead, he followed most of the passengers to the upper deck, then went outside at the prow.

This early in the spring, the wind on the sound had a bite. He hadn’t bothered to change clothes at home, had stopped at his Belltown condominium only long enough to throw what he thought he’d need into a suitcase. He buttoned his suit jacket to keep his tie from whipping over his shoulders, leaned against the railing and watched the gulls swoop over the ferry and the lateafternoon sunlight dance in shards off the choppy waves.

Why would his mother have chosen Middleton? Adrian wondered. How had she even found it? It was barely a dot on the map, likely a logging town once upon a time. Logging had been the major industry over here on the Olympic Peninsula until the forests had been devastated and hard times had come. Tourism had replaced logging on much of the peninsula, but what tourist would seek out Middleton, for God’s sake? It wasn’t on Hood Canal or the Strait of Juan de Fuca to the north. It was out in the middle of goddamn nowhere.

Why, Mom? Why?

He drove off the ferry at Winslow, on the tip of Bainbridge Island, then followed the two-lane highway that was a near straight-shot the length of the island, across the bridge and past the quaint town of Poulsbo. From then on, civilization pretty much disappeared but for a few gas stations and houses. Traffic was heavy, with this a Friday, so he couldn’t eat up the miles the way he’d have liked to. No chance to pass, no advantage if he’d been able to. He crossed the Hood Canal Bridge, the water glittering in the setting sunlight. Summer homes clung like barnacles along the shore. Then forest closed in, second-growth and empty of any evidence of human habitation.

Reluctance swelled in him and clotted in his chest. A couple of times he rubbed his breastbone as if he’d relieve heartburn. The light was fading by the time he spotted the sign: Middleton, 5 Miles.

He was the only one in the line of traffic to make the turn. And why would anyone? Along with distaste for what lay ahead came increasing bafflement at his mother’s choice. How had she even gotten here? Did the town boast a Greyhound station? Had she gone as far as her money held out? Stabbed her finger at a map? Or had some vagary of fate washed her up here?

So close to Seattle, and yet she’d never tried to get in touch with him.

So weirdly far from Seattle in every way that counted.

The speed limit dropped to thirty-five and he obediently slowed as the highway—if you could dignify it with that name—entered the outskirts. He saw the Safeway store almost immediately, and his foot lifted involuntarily from the gas pedal. Here. She was hit here. Flung to one of these narrow paved shoulders. With dark encroaching, he couldn’t see where, or if any evidence remained.

Ahead, he saw the blue hospital sign, but some impulse made him turn the other direction, toward downtown. The Burger King on the left seemed the only outpost of the modern world. Otherwise, the town he saw under streetlights probably hadn’t changed since the 1950s. There was an old-fashioned department store, churches—he saw three church spires without looking hard—pharmacy, hardware store. Some of the buildings had false fronts. All of the town’s meager commerce seemed to lie along the one main street, except for the Safeway.

A memory stirred in his head. Wasn’t there a Middleton in Nova Scotia? Or a Middleburg, or Middle – something? Had this town sounded like home to his mother? Had she stayed, then, because it felt like home, or because people here were good to her? Lucy Peterson had expressed guilt that they hadn’t done more, but she’d obviously cared.

More than Elizabeth Rutledge’s own family had.

His jaw muscles spasmed. If this woman was his mother, he’d have to tell his grandmother, who was frail but at eighty-two was still living in her house in the town of Brookfield in Nova Scotia. Would she be glad? Or grieve terribly to know what her daughter’s life had been like?

He ran out of excuses not to go to the hospital after a half-dozen city blocks. There wasn’t much to this town.