Page 46 of Violent Little Thing

“I hate to bring her here. It’s so dangerous with the valley and the rock outcrops. She could get seriously hurt, but we have no other choice, we think.”

“What’s going on?” Court finally interjected.

Jessa spilled her guts, telling him about her mother-in-law’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis, her subsequent spiral down into being scared and not knowing anyone around her. Then went on to explain that she’d been kicked out of several local old folks’ homes before they’d found the new one in Bozeman. That they were out of options and decided that the next best option was to move her into the small suite I was living in and get her round-the-clock care.

“I knew it was a possibility,” I said when I saw his face. “We’ve been preparing. My parents know that I might need to move back in for a bit.”

Jesus help me.

I loved my parents.

Really, I did.

But my mother’s love was suffocating, and my father loved my mother unconditionally. He would always choose her, even over their own daughter.

“She’ll move in with me,” Court said when Jessa started to go off on a tangent about how my parents would suffocate me. “I mean, that’s the next step, anyway.”

Jessa’s eyes went wide.

Before she could say anything, my phone rang behind me.

Knowing it was my mother calling thanks to the specific ringtone—Jaws themed—I left them both at the door and hurried back inside to find it.

I’d left it on the counter in my very dirty kitchen.

“Mom,” I said as I eyed the potato peels still in a bowl next to the sink.

“Hey, baby,” my mother said. “We have some news.”

My brows rose. “Oh?”

My mom always had gossip to share, but usually she didn’t sound so somber when she called to tell me the juicy details about who got in trouble with whose wife at work.

“Yeah,” Mom sighed. “We’re being asked to retire.”

I blinked. “You are?”

My mother groaned. “Yeah.”

“But why?” I asked, taking the bowl of potato peels and dumping them into the garbage instead of taking them outside to the compost pile as I normally would have.

It was too cold, and there was too much happening.

“According to them, their new insurance policy doesn’t want anyone over the age of sixty-four working on the floor,” my mother grumbled. “And since Dad is an all or nothing kind of guy when it comes to me…”

That was an understatement.

What actually happened was that Dad wasn’t going to lose his job. He was a pretty necessary guy at the power plant. They lost him, they lost a lot of knowledge and leadership. But he wouldn’t stay there if my mother was asked to retire.

Where my mom went, he followed.

“So you both are retiring,” I guessed.

“We’re both retiring,” she grumbled. “Not sure how to feel about it yet.”

Both Mom and Dad had worked their lives away.

Maybe this would be a good thing for them.