Todd had taken three cans of beer from the fridge, handed one to his mom first, then one to Chloe.
“Let’s sit down,” Madeline said. “This ankle is killing me.”
“What happened?” Chloe asked.
Madeline laughed. “I was stepping out of the tub and I don’t know what I did. Turned it the wrong way. Who knows!” She cackled. “You get to a certain age you can throw your back out just wiping your ass.”
“Mom, Jesus,” Todd said, cracking his own beer and taking a swig.
They all sat at the small kitchen table. Chloe dropped into a chair by an open laptop and two cell phones, one of them a really cheap flip one like she hadn’t seen in a decade. When her elbow bumped the table the screen came life. She glanced at it and noticed, quickly, it opened onto a webpage listing various senior citizen facilities in New Hampshire.
“Let me get that out of your way,” Todd said, folding the screen down and shoving the laptop to the end of the table. “How about this, huh? We’re like a family.”
Madeline reached out and squeezed Chloe’s hand. “I’m already thinking of you as the daughter I never had.”
Chloe said, “Uh-huh.”
“I’m really looking forward to us getting to know each other.”
Chloe smiled awkwardly. “Me too. Did Todd tell you I wanted to ask you some questions, like, on video? I’m kind of doing my own little documentary about this — what should I call it? Journey of self-discovery? I don’t know if anyone will ever see it, but it’s something I feel I need to do.”
“Oh, yeah, sure,” Madeline said. She ran her fingers through her ratty hair, which looked not unlike an oversized bird’s nest. “How do I look?”
“Great,” Chloe said. She got out her phone. She’d decided to do everything handheld, and not use her minitripod.
“Is the lighting okay?” Todd asked. A single bulb hung over the table.
“Perfect,” she said.
Madeline smiled, getting ready for her close-up. Todd said, “I guess you don’t need me for this part.”
“Not really,” Chloe said.
Todd stood, scooped up the laptop and the two phones, and disappeared down the hallway that led to a room at the back of the trailer. Madeline and Chloe heard a door close.
“Can I talk to you about something?” Madeline said, leaning in closer and whispering. “I mean, before you start filming?”
Chloe lowered the phone. “Okay.”
“I’m worried about him.”
“Oh.”
“He doesn’t listen to me. But he might listen to you. He’s been doing some things he shouldn’t.”
“Like?”
“I’m not sure. But you should ask him where he gets enough money to live like this. A place of his own.”
Chloe cast her eye about the debris-strewn kitchen. “Right.”
“He’s got some job at a computer store but I know they don’t pay him much. I know he’s up to something.”
Chloe thought about what she’d seen on the computer. “Why would Todd be looking up old-age homes? He told me his grandparents are all passed on, right?”
Madeline nodded. “Yup. All passed on. Why would you ask that?”
“It was on his computer,” she said.
Madeline thought about that. “I guess you should ask him.”
“I should ask him?”
“You’re his sister,” Todd’s mother said.
“I’ve only been his sister for a couple of weeks.”
“That’s not true. You’ve always been his sister. You only just found out recently. That’s different.”
“Still, you know him a lot better than I do. I think if anyone’s going to talk to him it should—”
“No, no, I think you came into our life for a reason.” Her eyes seemed to drift skyward for a second. “I think you came into our life to help Todd find his way. He can’t stop talking about you.” She laughed. “If you weren’t his sister, well, I think he’d be very interested in you in a different way.”
Chloe shivered. “Yeah, well, thanks for that. I’m really glad to have connected with Todd, too. And, you know, if he ever needs someone to talk to...”
“That’s wonderful. I’m so glad you feel that way. Okay, let’s do your little movie.” She sat back in her chair and flashed Chloe a Hollywood smile.
Madeline was sitting on the couch in front of Todd’s TV, watching Family Feud, her right leg resting on a plastic milk crate, an ice pack under her ankle, when it came time to say goodbye.
“You okay if I don’t get up?” she said.
“No problem,” Chloe said, standing at the door.
“Give us a kiss before you go,” she demanded. Chloe bent over to give the woman a peck on the cheek, but got pulled into another hug. “Don’t be a stranger. And don’t forget what I asked you.”
“Sure thing,” Chloe said.
“Walk you to your car,” Todd said.
Once outside, he said to her, “She can be a bit much sometimes. But she’s really happy to meet you. Did she give you a good interview?”
“Yeah.” Chloe paused, wondering whether to get into it. “She’s worried about you.”
“What else is new?”
“She says you’re getting into some bad shit, but she doesn’t exactly know what.”
“She imagines things,” Todd said.
“Why did you have a list of old folks homes on your computer screen?”
“Huh?”
“I saw it. Before you closed your laptop. Why would you be researching those kinds of places?”
“I might have gotten on the page by mistake.”
“Why’d you have two cell phones?”
Todd blinked. “Who says I have two cell phones?”
“They were sitting right there.”
He shrugged. “Just a backup. You know, in case one dies.”
They’d reached Chloe’s Pacer. “Let me tell you a story,” she said. “I go visit my grandfather a lot.”
“Yeah, you said.”
“One time I was there, sitting in the dining hall, and there was this one old lady, in a wheelchair, and she wouldn’t stop crying. Sometimes, you know, you hear them moaning and stuff because they’re old and shit hurts. But she was just crying and crying. I thought maybe someone had died. So I asked my grandfather, did he know what happened with her?”
“Okay.”
“And he says, that day was her son’s birthday. She had this grown-up son, like forty or fifty years old. But anyway, it was his birthday, and he was going to come and visit her, but she had nothing for him. She’d always get one of the staff to go out and pick him up a gift card for Burger King. Her son loved Whoppers, and I think I saw him one time, and I gotta say, I believe it. She’d get him a card with fifty bucks loaded on it. But she didn’t have any money in the bank. She couldn’t do it. She’d lost almost everything. Not a fortune. Around three thousand or something, although if I actually had that much in the bank I’d feel like the richest person on Earth. But anyway, she had all this money but she got scammed out of it.”
“Scammed?”
“Yeah. I don’t know all the exact details but she gets this random call one day, and it’s someone pretending to be a relative or something, and they’re in some kind of trouble and need money right away. Like, for an operation or bail, or something. And she falls for it, and wires all this money to someone. And that was the last she saw of it.”
“Jeez,” he said. Hesitantly, he asked, “What’s the name of this old folks place?”
“Providence Valley.”
Todd nodded slowly. “Oh.”
“Heard of it?”
He shook his head.
“Anyway, it was the saddest crying I ever heard,” Chloe said. “What kind of person would do something like that?”