And now Maleah’s mixed babbled nonsense in Holden’s office yesterday was making a lot more sense. She slapped the phone to her forehead and sighed. Maleah turned on the speaker. “Okay, well, I hope you and Dad stay in Wakea’s and Pele’s good graces from here on out.”
“Yes, that would be nice,” her mother said with exasperation. “And a few minutes ago, after I got your father all settled in front of the TV. He’s watching reruns of M*A*S*H. Can you believe he found that old show on the television? He’s seen every episode, but it makes him happy, so I don’t say a thing.”
“Mom,” Maleah interrupted. Her patience for her mother’s wandering thoughts was wearing a wee bit thin. “Can you tell me your other news?”
“I’m getting to it,” she said.
Maleah loved her mom dearly, but there were times when the woman tested her inner strength.
“Aunt Kiki had an episode and she is at the Mount Tenderfoot Medical Center.”
“What kind of episode?”
“The nurse told me Aunt Kiki was confused and wandering around town in the middle of the night in her bathrobe. She kept saying she lost her pet turtle.”
“In Three Peaks? When did this happen?”
“Last night.”
Maleah thought about her great-aunt and could picture Kiki doing something like that. “I highly doubt she was confused.”
“I can’t say if she was or not, but the nurses didn’t believe there was any turtle involved. She also didn’t have shoes on. When the paramedics arrived, Aunt Kiki was sitting on the curb and she was bleeding. This isn’t good, Maleah. Your great-aunt is under observation, and for now they will not release her.”
“Mom, that’s awful. Aunt Kiki is the most mentally sound person I know. If she said she lost her turtle, then she lost her turtle.” That wasn’t totally true, but once you understood her quirks, you realized Aunt Kiki’s eccentricities were a normal part of her personality, not an “episode.”
“She was half frozen and speaking nonsense. I don’t blame the nursing facility for holding her. The whole situation is a mess. Even worse than the one here. I can’t fly to Colorado to check on her. Not with your dad in his condition.”
The bomb hovered over Maleah’s head. Before it dropped, she asked, “Did you call Auntie Hana or Brielle?”
Maleah knew what her mom would say about her cousin Hana before the words came out of her mouth. Jona’s cousin, Hana, and Aunt Kiki’s only daughter, was as reliable as a canoe with a giant hole in the bottom. Hana’s daughter, Brielle, who Maleah had practically grown up with in Three Peaks, was a hundred times more reliable but often hard to get ahold of.
As expected, Jona shared her findings about trying to reach her flaky family members. “Hana is working on a boat in Alaska. She’s not going to be back in port in Ketchikan for another two weeks. When she does arrive, I doubt she’ll come home to check on her mom. I haven’t been able to speak with Brielle. I was starting to wonder if the two of you were ignoring my calls on purpose.”
“I don’t do that, Mom,” Maleah reiterated. “I’ll try to reach Brielle online. She’s in Ireland, but she doesn’t always check her messages.”
“Oh, thank you. I know Brie will want to know about Kiki.”
“Okay, sure,” Maleah said, resolving herself to the current emergency. Emergencies, she corrected. Plural problems.
Jona and Maleah sighed simultaneously.
Maybe Maleah was doomed by her genetics. She thought of herself as an honest, hard-working, well-grounded woman with the highest of integrity and morals, but the weirdness gene still existed somewhere within her strands of DNA. Talking to her mother reinforced these ideas that the nature was stronger than the nurture. She had Albert for a father, though, so maybe there was some hope.
She knew what was coming next but waited for her mother to ask.
“Can you check on Aunt Kiki? She has friends, you know, but she needs someone in the family right now.”
Before answering, Maleah already knew she was headed home to Three Peaks. The place she’d grown up in. Where she learned to dislike small towns for their inability to let you have any privacy whatsoever, and where you simultaneously had nothing better to do than gossip about the neighbors. After high school, Maleah couldn’t move away from town fast enough. Not that Three Peaks, Colorado, was horrible, because it wasn’t. The mountain town didn’t suit the lifestyle she dreamed of living. She wanted activity, nightlife, and conveniences. Or did she?
Maleah had gotten her master’s degree from the University of Denver and had experienced what she had longed for as a kid. Parties, diversity, city life were right outside her door. But by her senior year, she was too busy completing her graduate work to go out much. After graduation, she worked full-time at a nursery near her house while searching for the perfect job. It’d taken over a year to find and be accepted into the paid internship program at True Green.
After moving to Boulder, she’d become even more focused, and her entire social life revolved around work. It’d been months since she had gone out with friends. Maleah usually spent her limited amount of free time catching up on movies or going for a hike. If she wanted to splurge and treat herself, her grand outings involved buying a cup of coffee and taking advantage of a sale on clothes or shoes. Since graduating, she wasn’t what anyone would call a social diva, partygoer, or extroverted in any sense of the meaning. Somehow, she’d morphed into a worker bee, a drone, a freaking recluse. Wow. What happened to me?
“Maleah? Are you still there? These cell phones are so awful, Albert…”
“I’m here, Mom. Sorry, I was just thinking. Of course I’ll go see Aunt Kiki. Do you need help with Dad? Should I fly to Hawaii after I visit Three Peaks?” What am I saying? I can’t afford to fly to Hawaii.
“You are such a sweet girl,” her mother cooed. “No, no. We’ll be fine. Albert will heal fast. But I would love to see you. Maybe you should come for a visit at Thanksgiving. Will you be able to take time off work? We would love that so much!”
Maleah swallowed hard. Mom didn’t know she was jobless, and Maleah didn’t want to deliver any more bad news.
“I can’t give you an answer about the holidays right now, but I can be in Three Peaks today. I’ll call you when I find out what happened to Auntie Kiki.”
“Are you sure? You can take off work on short notice? Are you at work now, sweetheart?”
Maleah ignored the last question. “Yep, I can leave as soon as I pack my bag. My boss is great.” Yeah, because she is me, Maleah thought and realized for the first time that when you don’t have a boss, you are officially your own boss. The idea was both thrilling and unsettling. She was going to have to kick herself in the rear and get moving if she was going to make the four-and-a-half-hour drive home. “Taking off for a few days to take care of family is not a problem.”
Her mom rambled on for a few more minutes, but Maleah missed most of the babbling about her father’s need for pillows and pineapple juice. She caught the name of the hospital, nursing, and rehabilitation center where Aunt Kiki was, but she was already familiar with the medical facility. It was the only one in town and a big deal when it had opened in the high country.