Page 4 of Families and Other Enemies

Aunt Cora leaned forward like a snake about to strike. “You broke your father’s heart. You killed him!”

“Aunt Cora, he died of heart disease!” She was talking at cross-purposes, trying to reason with dementia and paranoia. Back on track.Back on track. “Aunt Cora, I have bad news about Kellen.”

“Earle died because you couldn’t keep your mouth shut, that’s what! You kept telling him he needed to accept you and your ‘girlfriend.’” Cora flung her arms in the air in what Kellen took to be air quotes every time she said the word girlfriend. If Cora knew what Kellen knew—that her cousin had intended to marry her girlfriend—the gesture probably would have been considerably different.

“I never thought I would hate someone as much as I hate you.” Aunt Cora’s soft voice contrasted with the venom of her words.

“I’m Ceecee. Kellen was your daughter, and I have news about her. Aunt Cora, she’s—”

Aunt Cora leaned her hands on the arms of the chair and pushed herself to her feet. She didn’t yell—Aunt Cora would never raise her voice—but her quiet hatred made Kellen lean away from her. “You are my daughter no longer. Last time I saw you I told you to get out and stay out. Now do it. I don’t need you.”

It was too much. Too much. Kellen had lived through fire and rain, through battle and terror. Now she felt like a child again, with Cora telling her how much of a disappointment she was to her aunt and uncle, and a disgrace to her parents’ memory.

No wonder she had been reluctant to visit Aunt Cora.

Kellen pushed the button to call the nurse.

And ran away.

Kellen knew she looked ridiculous speed-walking out of the memory care center, her arms pumping hard to speed up her cowardly feet. At the front desk, she avoided Nurse Warren’s sympathetic gaze, signed out and headed for the exit. The lock clicked to let her out, the door swung slowly open and desert heat struck her right in the face.

That was real, not artificial like the air-conditioning, not crippled like Aunt Cora’s mind and heart.

As Kellen strode purposely past one of the gardens, a nurse’s aide who was combing her patient’s hair looked at her with the purest sympathy. Kellen almost faltered under the woman’s understanding gaze. Kellen could hear the patient, a woman in her eighties with papery skin and feathery white hair, say to the nurse, “He was a beauty, all right. Do you think he’ll ask me to dance at the next sock hop?”

The aide went back to her task, answering kindly, “I’m sure he will, when we have a sock hop.”

Kellen’s eye filled with tears, although she didn’t know why.

She reached her car, and after fumbling her keys out of the pocket of her jeans, she flung open the door. She didn’t even wait for the burning heat of the car interior to cool before she sat down, buckled up (the metal buckle burned) and started the car. She wanted to drive, right now, away from here, and tried to touch the parts of the steering wheel that had not been directly in the sunlight. She couldn’t quite, so while she waited, she noted that her breathing sounded as erratic as Aunt Cora’s, and she was in a cold sweat, trembling.

If Aunt Cora could speak to someone she believed to be her daughter with such venom, Kellen didn’t want to imagine what Cora would say to her, the battered woman whose husband had murdered the real Kellen.

Her breathing calmed as the air conditioner finally began pumping out cold air. Kellen pulled off her visitor’s pass, flung it in the center console and drove away from the memory care center. She didn’t know where she was headed, but anywhere was better than here, where she had no belief or hope that ties of blood could heal the old rift with her last remaining relative.

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