Still the One. Michelle Major

turned, flexing a skull tattoo in Lainey’s direction. “Your mom made good progress this morning. Her left leg is about seventy-five percent of its normal strength.”

      “Stupid right leg,” Vera mumbled.

      “It’ll come,” the burly man said with surprising softness as he tucked a quilt around her. “Rest now. You earned it.”

      Vera smiled at him and Lainey saw color creep up his neck. Her mother could wrap any man around her finger.

      Lainey noticed a bright sheen of perspiration across her mother’s forehead. Vera used every ounce of strength to get better while Lainey bickered with Julia over ancient history. She was here to help, Lainey reminded herself, not stumble down the rocky path to bad memory lane.

      She stepped closer and lifted Vera’s fingers. She looked at Julia. “I guess we should stick to discussing the adoption event,” she whispered.

      “And current local gossip,” Julia added. “The kind that doesn’t involve our family.”

      Lainey choked out a laugh at that.

      Vera squeezed Lainey’s hand. Her eyes fluttered open. “More like it,” she said and snuggled deeper against the pillows.

      Lainey smiled, impressed but not surprised that even in her condition, Vera Morgan could bend her daughters to her will with a few chosen words. She’d honed that skill for years.

      “Heard about your dog?” Vera asked, her eyes concerned.

      “Nothing yet.”

      “Ethan is best. He’ll do good.”

      Lainey nodded. She thought about the care Ethan had given Pita and the tenderness he’d shown to her. A slow ache built in her heart. “I stopped by the shelter office after I left the clinic.” She needed to regain control.

      “You get the box?”

      Lainey pointed to a large plastic storage tub in the corner of the room. “Rest for a bit, Mom. Then we’ll go through it.”

      Julia patted Vera’s leg. “I need to go.”

      Vera’s left hand clamped around Julia’s wrist. “You stay.”

      Her tone brooked no argument, although Julia gave it her best shot.

      “I need to check in with Val, see if I can pick up some hours if my doctor approves.”

      Vera’s hold didn’t loosen. “Later.”

      “Fine.” Vera let go of Julia’s hand as she stood. “I need to pee first. It feels like this kid has his heel shoved against my bladder.”

      Lainey blew out a short breath as Julia closed the bathroom door. She felt her mother’s eyes on her. “This doesn’t change anything.”

      “You good girl,” Vera said, reaching out to her.

      Lainey pushed up from the bed. “I don’t know what you expect, but me being here isn’t going to make the past go away. I can do my penance this summer, but I can’t change what happened. What I did.” She couldn’t change who she was, how the tragedy had changed her. Forever.

      “Good girl,” Vera repeated.

      Her mother used the same tone Lainey did with Pita. She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She tucked her hair behind her ear. “We’ll go through the plans while you rest,” she said, but her mother’s eyes had already slipped closed.

      Lainey smoothed the quilt again and turned for the big box in the corner.

      Work on the adoption event kept Lainey occupied the rest of the day. Julia had stayed at the hospital until lunchtime, the two sisters careful not to let the topic stray from animals needing a home.

      The call came in around four o’clock. Her hands shook as she stared at the clinic’s number on her cell phone.

      “Answer it,” her mother said.

      She brought the phone to her ear, expecting Ethan’s voice.

      “Lainey?” Stephanie Rand said. “She’s okay.”

      A strangled sob escaped her lips. “Oh, thank God.”

      Steph continued, “I don’t think you want your undies back, but at least they’re out.”

      “Can I come get her?” Lainey spoke around the lump of tears knotting at the back of her throat.

      “We’d like to keep her overnight, just to make sure she’s back to normal. You can pick her up first thing in the morning.”

      Lainey made a squeaky sound she hoped passed for a ‘yes’ and hung up.

      She looked at her mother. The deep understanding in Vera’s gaze almost sent her over the edge.

      “Underpants,” she mumbled, her voice wobbly. “How dumb.” Stupid to make everything so personal.

      “Go home.”

      “I’m fine.”

      “Home,” her mother said again, pointing at the door.

      Lainey knew she should argue, insist on staying, but fatigue settled over her. She leaned in and kissed her mother’s cheek. “I’ll be back in the morning.” She traced the corner of Vera’s lopsided mouth.

      “Bring polish.”

      “What?”

      Vera wiggled her fingers in the air. “Upstairs bathroom, bottom drawer. Pink polish, ‘Touch of Love.’”

      Despite her jumbled emotions, Lainey smiled. “We’ll have a mini spa day.”

      Vera fingered Lainey’s hair. “Julia can cut for you.”

      “I like my hair, Mom.” She covered her mother’s hand with hers and pulled it away, straightening from the bed.

      “Too long. Julia helps.”

      Her back stiffened. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said quickly and turned for the door. Vera never approved of her hair, her clothes, her makeup—or lack thereof.

      Why should it be different now?

      Her mother had only one definition of beautiful: blond hair, blue-eyed with a Barbie’s unrealistic measurements. Vera had epitomized the look in her day, and Julia was the spitting image of their mother.

      Lainey was a chip off the Eastern European block of her father’s family with her unruly hair and olive skin. At least she’d gotten her mother’s button nose, although it looked out of place set between her almond-shaped eyes and too-wide mouth.

      She eyed the hospital exit sign like it was the finish line of the Boston Marathon. When the automatic doors slid open, a wave of aggressively humid air hit her square in the face and she slowed. Everything moved at a snail’s pace during a Brevia summer.

      “No,” she told herself as she unlocked the Land Cruiser and slid behind the steering wheel. She took a few deep breaths and pulled out of the parking lot, determined to hold herself in check.

      The heat did not own her.

      This town would not bully her.

      Her mother could not control her any more.

      She forced herself on a four-mile run when she got back to the house. Better to sweat out her emotions than indulge in another pint of Chubby Hubby.

      After a long, cool shower, she slipped into a pair of cotton shorts and a black tank top. She’d spent the previous night awake with Pita, so she now began unpacking her clothes into the same dresser that had once held sets of Garanimals outfits. The shadow of the bed’s ruffled canopy fell over her like a weight.

      The walls seemed to hum with long-ago conversations and emotions. She couldn’t watch television without imagining