She nodded sadly. Once she left and hopped on the bus, she might never see her mother alive again. “Let’s make the best of what we have now.” She gave her mother a happy smile.
Cora watched her closely.
She looked away. “Mom, I know—”
“What time do you have to catch your train?”
“Four. I should leave here around three, at the latest.” She glanced at her suitcase where her ticket lay hidden.
“Well, son, I hope your trip is uneventful. You’re planning on going back to that place I told you about?”
She stopped from rolling her eyes at her mother’s vagueness. “Mother, we can talk freely here. I don’t think the room is bugged even with you-know-who involved. Yes, I’m heading to Woodberry Creek. “
“Good.” Cora nodded. “She won’t think of finding you there.”
“I should hope not after all the planning I’ve done. When I arrive in Woodberry Creek, Sharon Wade will be there waiting for me.” She shared a smile with her mother. Not only would she reside in the small town in Pennsylvania where her mother grew up, one Genevieve had no idea about, but she’d picked her new name in honor of her mother’s mother, her grandmother Sharon, and Wade, her grandfather.
“Did I hear ya say Woodberry Creek?”
She jerked at the loud booming voice. A large, stocky black woman with hair shorter than hers and wearing dark-green scrubs entered with a tray.
Her mother smiled at the nurse and coughed again. “You have ears like a hawk, Michelle.”
Michelle snorted and put the covered tray on the table near the bed. She pulled off the plastic cover, and the smell of chicken and rice wafted up. “You’d better believe it.” She jutted her chin out toward Deborah. “And who is this handsome young man?”
She did her best not to blush under the scrutinizing stare. She dropped her face to her chest, mumbling her “name.”
“This is my son, Wade. He’s visiting me before he goes home.”
Michelle fisted her hands on her abundant hips. “Pleasure to meet you. Your mother is a lovely woman, even if she does cheat at Scrabble.”
“I do not!” Cora shouted hoarsely and coughed loudly.
“Mom, calm down.” Deborah remembered to keep her voice low and lightly clapped her mother on the back.
“I-I’m okay,” Cora replied. When she finished her coughing fit, she took her breathing tube out of her nose, picked up a fork, and poked at her food.
“You’re from Woodberry Creek? I have family there.” Michelle fluffed one of the pillows behind Cora’s back.
“Oh, really?” She wished Michelle hadn’t overheard their conversation.
“Yup. My three brothers live on the border of Woodberry Creek, close to Augusta.”
Cora bit into a roll. “Augusta? In Georgia?”
Michelle gave her a strange look. “Yes, ma’am. The Woodberry Creek I know of is in the state of Georgia.”
Deborah shared a knowing look with her mother and finally relaxed her shoulders. “I’ve lived there for almost five years now. Woodberry Creek is a beautiful town.”
“Next time I go visit, I should look you up,” Michelle answered.
“That would be nice.” She spent the next few minutes asking Michelle about her family, making certain to agree with her about the Woodberry Creek in Georgia she had no desire to visit.
When the nurse finally left, she waited until her mother finished her late lunch. Soon Cora’s eyes began to droop.
“I love you, Mommy, so much,” she whispered in her mother’s ear as she placed her head on the pillow next to her.
“And I love you, my favorite daughter,” Cora replied to her only daughter, blinking away tears.
Mother and daughter stared at each other until the elder woman drifted off to sleep. She wanted to leave something tangible behind that belonged to her but didn’t want to chance it.
After saying her final goodbyes to the sleeping woman who did her best in raising her, she kissed her cheek and left.
No one called out or stopped the young man wearing a blue baseball cap, T-shirt, and jeans, who called a taxi from the pay phone in the lobby. And when the man got in the taxi, he was forgotten, just like one of the many visitors walking in and out the doors of the hospice facility.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Deborah sat outside the station waiting for her train. Spending the next seventy-two hours on a train wasn’t her idea of fun, but then again, being punched in the face and having your mother’s life threatened wasn’t, either.
Taking out the cell phone from her pocket, she flipped it open and thumbed the keyboard. Taking a deep breath, she punched in the number embedded in her head and held the phone to her ear as it rang.
After the third ring, someone picked up. They didn’t speak right away and wouldn’t until Deborah did.
“Hello, Gilberto,” she said in greeting.
“Hello. How’s the baby doing?”
She released a shaky breath upon hearing his voice. “The baby is okay. How’s your sister’s employer?”
“She’s upset and won’t leave her bed because she’s lost someone very dear to her. Right now she’s sleeping from the pills the doctor has given her.”
She fisted her hand on her knee. From what Gilberto just told her, Genevieve had finally learned of her death.
“When everything is settled, when will you and Teresa take your vacation?”
“Very soon. I take it your vacation will be a safe one?”
“Yes. It looks like it will be.” She wanted to know more about Genevieve, but her time was limited since the train had entered the station and passengers were getting on.
“Be very careful, mi amiga querida,” Gilberto warned gently.
She closed her eyes. She’d miss Gilberto and Teresa, the only real friends she had for the past few years. “I will, my friend.” She ended the call.
Getting up from the bench, she grabbed her suitcase and, as she walked to the train that would take her far away, she threw the phone in a nearby garbage can.
She walked on the train toward her sleeping compartment. This was a start of a new life for her, one where she wouldn’t jump at shadows or live in fear every time she might have done something Genevieve thought she did wrong.
From now on Genevieve would no longer consume her waking thought. She would live for herself and no one else.
* * * *
When she got off the train at the Woodberry Creek station three days later, it was like she’d come home. She had never visited the town since her parents had moved to the West Coast before she was born. But hearing her mother’s stories of growing up in the small town straight out of the movie The Music Man, she felt as if she’d lived there as well.