Money, Guns, and a Merry Christmas novel · Chapter 4 of 24
Chapter 4: Pine Hollow Manor
"You put your mother in a home three days before Christmas," I said.
"I put her somewhere safe." Deena set her cup down on the banister post. "You can visit. Ten to four."
Bennet came down the stairs behind me, already in his coat, holding mine.
"We'll go now," he said.
Pine Hollow Manor had a plastic wreath on the door and a lobby that smelled like bleach and canned gravy.
A dozen residents sat around a television showing a Christmas parade.
My grandmother was in a wheelchair by the window.
She did not need a wheelchair.
She was still in her nightgown under her blue cardigan, her slippers on, her braid half undone.
"Grandma."
She looked up, and her whole face broke.
"They came at five," she said. "Deena and that boy from the Exxon. I thought the house was on fire."
I knelt in front of her and redid her braid with my fingers so I wouldn't scream.
The front doors whooshed open behind me.
Deena, dressed now, with Celine right behind her and the phone up.
"Of course," Deena said. "Of course you came here to make a scene."
The director came out of her office in a Christmas sweater.
"Mrs. Ashmore holds power of attorney," she said to me, gently, like I was the one who needed handling. "Your grandmother was admitted at her request."
"At her request," I said. "Ask my grandmother what she requests."
"Ma'am, with a power of attorney..."
"She's eighty-one, not unconscious."
The residents had stopped watching the parade.
A man in a plaid robe turned his whole chair around to see.
Bennet walked past all of us to the wheelchair.
He crouched so his eyes were level with my grandmother's.
"Carolyn," he said. "Where would you like to be today?"
She looked at him a long moment.
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