My 80-year-old mother left for a weeklong visit with an old friend. When she returned, she looked half her size and carried a suitcase that wasn’t hers. Then I called her friend and learned she hadn’t lived at that address for eight years. Where had Mom really been?
I almost walked past my mother at the train station.
She was standing beside a bench, gripping the handle of an enormous black suitcase.
Her gray hair was flattened against her forehead, and the cardigan she’d worn for years hung loosely from her shoulders.
“Mom?”
She turned and smiled.
“Hello, sweetheart.”
I hurried toward her.
“What happened to you?”
“Nothing happened, Laura.”
Her cheeks looked hollow.
Even her voice sounded weaker than usual.
My mother, Evelyn, was 80, cheerful, and slightly overweight.
She loved baking and never missed Sunday dinner.
Seven days earlier, she’d left to visit her childhood friend Margaret, whom she hadn’t seen in 20 years.
Now she looked half her usual size.
“Are you sick?”
“Just a little stomach trouble.”
“I’m taking you to the hospital.”
“You’re taking me home.”
Then I noticed the suitcase.
“Where’s your blue bag?”
“Margaret gave me this one. Mine broke.”
She tightened her grip on the handle.
“Can we please go?”
I wanted to argue, but she looked exhausted.
I took the suitcase and guided her toward my car.
It was much heavier than I expected.
Mom had been excited about the trip.
Margaret lived three hours away, and the two women had known each other since childhood.
When Mom announced that Margaret’s daughter had invited her to visit, I was delighted.
“You haven’t seen her in forever,” I said.
“Twenty years,” Mom replied.
“Then you should go.”
Mom hesitated.
“I don’t like leaving you with everything.”
“Mom, I’m 52. I think I can survive a week without Sunday dinner.”
She laughed.
I drove her to the station the following Monday.
She carried a small blue travel bag containing clothes, medication, and a box of homemade cookies.
Before boarding, she gave me a telephone number.
“Margaret’s number. In case you need anything.”
I saved it.
We spoke briefly twice during the week.
Both times, Mom said she was having a lovely visit.
But she never put Margaret on the phone.
And whenever I asked what they’d been doing, she changed the subject.
I hadn’t thought much of it.
Not until I saw her at the station.
At home, Mom insisted on carrying the black suitcase upstairs herself.
She struggled with the first two steps before I took it from her.
“You’re not lifting this.”
“Just put it in my bedroom.”
I did.
She followed me inside, waited until I left, and locked the door.
Mom had never locked her bedroom door during the day.
That evening, she barely touched the soup I made.
I checked her temperature, encouraged her to drink water, and asked again about seeing a doctor.
“Tomorrow, perhaps,” she said.
“Mom, you look terrible.”
“Thank you, darling.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I. I’m tired, not dying.”
She tried to smile, but I wasn’t reassured.
After she went to bed, I called Margaret.
A man answered.
“Hello?”
“Hi, may I speak to Margaret?”
There was a pause.
“Margaret hasn’t lived here for eight years.”
I checked the number.
“Are you sure?”
“Quite sure. I’ve had this number for years.”
“Do you know where she moved?”
“No, sorry.”
I thanked him and hung up.
Then I called Mom’s cell phone.
I heard it ringing upstairs.
She didn’t answer.
I stood at the bottom of the stairs, wondering why she’d given me a number that no longer belonged to her friend.
The next morning, I found Mom asleep in her armchair.
She was still wearing yesterday’s cardigan.
On the little table beside her lay a train ticket dated three days before I’d picked her up.
Underneath it was a luggage tag.
The name was Ellen.
Not Margaret.
Not Evelyn.
I looked toward the hallway.
Mom had left her bedroom door open, and the black suitcase stood beside her dresser.
I knew I shouldn’t go through her belongings.
But she was visibly ill, and she’d lied about where she’d been.
At that point, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was seriously wrong.
I carried the suitcase into the hallway and opened it.
Inside were neatly folded clothes, a sealed brown envelope, and an old-fashioned digital camera.
The clothes looked too large for Mom.
Beneath them lay a child’s faded yellow sweater and a small wooden rolling pin.
I recognized the rolling pin.
Or thought I did.
There had been one just like it in my childhood kitchen.
I picked up the camera.
Its battery indicator was almost empty.
There were only four photographs.
The first showed Mom standing outside a modest brick house.
In the second, she sat beside a frail elderly woman in a bedroom.
The third showed a handwritten schedule taped to a refrigerator.
Meals, medication reminders, and notes about helping someone move safely.
Then I opened the fourth.
It was a photograph of an older printed picture.
A woman stood outside a little white house, holding a toddler in a yellow sweater.
I recognized the child immediately.
It was me.
And I recognized the woman.
“Aunt Maggie,” I whispered.
I hadn’t heard that name in decades.
At the bottom of the photograph, someone had written an address.
I knew the street.
It was where I’d spent countless afternoons as a little girl.
I grabbed my car keys.
I checked that Mom was sleeping comfortably, left her a note, and drove across town.
The little white house was still there, though its porch had been replaced.
