I gripped the phone.

“Brenda, what happened? Is Mom okay?”

“Your mother fired me.” A sob broke through. “There’s a man there. I don’t know who he is, but she chose him over me. Twelve years, Margaret, and she chose him.”

“What are you talking about? Slow down.”

“Just go home. See it yourself. I can’t be there when you do.”

The call ended.

I grabbed my keys and drove home in a blur. Twelve years of Brenda. Twelve years of trust. And now there was some stranger in Mom’s room?

I pushed through the front door.

The house was silent.

Too silent.

I marched down the hall and threw open Mom’s bedroom door.

Then I froze.

Part 2

Sitting beside her bed was a huge man in a black leather vest. His beard reached his chest, and tattoos climbed up his neck and covered both of his massive hands. One of those hands held a spoon of chicken soup, carefully raised toward my mother’s mouth.

And Mom—my frail, exhausted, bedridden mother—was smiling at him like he had brought the sun into the room.

“Mom?”

She turned toward me, and her smile faded slightly.

“Margaret. You’re home early.”

“Yes, I am.”

I kept my eyes on the stranger.

“Can I speak with you alone?”

The man set the spoon down, wiped a drop of soup from Mom’s chin, and stood.

“I’ll be in the garden, Miss Margaret,” he said quietly.

He walked past me. I waited until I heard the back door close.

Then I turned on my mother.

“Who is that?” I hissed. “Where did you find him? Brenda is devastated. She said you fired her.”

“His name is Louis.”

“That is not an explanation. Mom, look at him. The tattoos, the vest—he looks like he just walked out of—”

“Margaret.”

“What if he steals from you? What if he hurts you? What were you thinking, letting a stranger into this house while I was at work?”

“He is not a stranger to me.”

I stopped.

“What does that mean?”

She didn’t answer. She only turned her face toward the window, toward the garden, toward him.

“Mom, please. Brenda has cared for you for more than a decade. You can’t just replace her with some biker off the street.”

“He is staying,” Mom said.

Her voice had iron in it, a strength I had not heard in years.

“I want Louis to care for me. Do you understand, Margaret? No matter what.”

I opened my mouth, then closed it.