Chapter 12: Mother of the Bride

My foster mother arrived at the villa at nine that night, in a taxi, with a quilt over her arm.

I had called her Mom since I was twelve.

She was sixty-three and small, with a gray bob and a cardigan she wore in any weather.

She came up the walk looking for me before she looked for anybody else.

"There you are." She put both hands on my face. "Oh, honey. You're so thin."

"I'm fine, Mom."

"You are not. You're a ghost."

Behind her, the porch light came on, and Shea came out in bare feet, with her eyes already wet.

"Mom! Thank God you're here."

She hugged her mother hard.

When she lifted her head, her face was creased with worry.

"I didn't want to scare you on the phone. Melinda's been having these spells."

"The heat, and the stress, and the wedding. She doesn't remember things."

"I remember everything," I said.

"See? That's what I mean." Shea looked at her mother with brimming eyes.

"She wandered off into the desert on her own, Mom. A ranger had to carry her."

"He didn't carry me."

"She's so defensive about it."

My mother looked from one of us to the other.

Her eyebrows pulled together.

I watched her do what she had done in a thousand arguments in our kitchen.

She took the side of the one who was crying.

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