Chapter 9
"Hello mom" Chloe waited for the disinfectant spray to dry on her hands before hugging her mother and kissing her cheek. "You look good today, better."
Chloe avoided looking her mother straight in the eyes.
If she was being completely honest, she had had a hard time to enter her hospital room. Joyce had looked very sick, old, gray and fragile the last time Chloe was here. She hated hospitals. Back then, Chloe had said goodbye to her with a stone in her stomach and a hole in her heart.
Then she had driven to the house and sat in silence with her stepfather in the kitchen.
When he started crying, her eyes filled with tears and they hugged, only for the second time in Chloe's life.
The first time had been at her and Rachel's wedding.
"What do you have there mom?"
Joyce smiled weakly.
"It's a special hairbrush. I like the way it feels, it doesn't scratch my scalp but I'm afraid the nurses don't have enough time and I've been a little clumsy lately."
Chloe looked at her mother, who had pulled a nice bathrobe over her neat Sunday clothes, on the small table next to her a card showing exotic dried flowers.
Chloe stepped around the wheelchair behind her mother, picked up the brush and began gently brushing Joyce's hair. At least the bit of fluff that was left on her head.
"Thank you my darling," her mother whispered and Chloe could feel Joyce relax.
Half an hour later, Chloe rang for a nurse and she helped her gently put Joyce to bed and propped her up with pillows.
"You look pale," she remarked. "Maybe you want to go down to the cafeteria?"
"No thanks," Chloe replied quietly, "I just want to sit here and watch my mom sleep"
"Yes of course, you do that honey, she had a good day today."
Chloe held Joyce's hand for a moment, stroking her small fingers.
"I love you mom," she whispered, then turned away.
Her gaze fell on the card again, she rubbed it, remembering that she had made one just like these as a child.
For a moment she thought of Max, whom she hadn't spoken to in a long time.
The scent of jasmine spread across Chloe's palms.
She thought of Rachel and had to swallow hard and pull herself together to not sob out loud.
Only now could she read the words that had been written on the card and she recognized the handwriting immediately.
A squared picture was enclosed, it showed a woman in a stylish snowsuit. On top of Mount Everest.
Rachel had sent the hairbrush that her mother enjoyed so much, Rachel had sent the scent card.
Rachel thought of Joyce wherever she was or went.
When she was sure that her mother was sleeping calmly and breathing steadily, Chloe got up quietly and left the hospital.
She drove to Cedar Ave. For a moment she considered putting the ladder against the wall and sneaking into her old room without David noticing.
But then she shook her head with a sad smile at her own stupidity and unlocked the front door, she greeted her stepfather by simply not saying anything and he just nodded silently and then looked out into the backyard, just like he did before.
Chloe went upstairs, sat on her old bed, and got her cell phone out of her jeanspocket.
Rachel's latest video showed an artistic montage of her climbing Everest. The title being "I finally did it ..."
She gave the video a thumbs up and turned off her cell when "Adressing the rumors - uploaded eight months ago" appeared in her recommondations.
Then she got up slowly, went over to her suitcase, which she finally unpacked and put her things in the old chest of drawers that her father had once built for her.
When she reached the bottom of the suitcase, she picked up the papers and after rummaging for a pen on the desk for a while, she straightened up and without hesitation signed the papers that would seal her divorce.