Before leaving, he picked up his suitcase.
“Love you.”
“Love you too.”
He smiled, kissed me again, and walked out.
That was the last time I said those words without knowing what they would cost me.
Two hours later, my mother’s neighbor called.
“Kylie, you need to come to Chicago. Your mother’s been taken to the hospital.”
My heart dropped.
Mom was seventy-four and lived outside Chicago, about forty minutes from the airport. She’d been feeling tired recently, but she’d insisted that she was fine.
According to Harold, her neighbor, she’d become dizzy while gardening and had nearly collapsed.
The doctors were monitoring her.
“She’s awake,” Harold assured me. “But you should come if you can.”
I booked the first available flight.
My sister-in-law, Denise, agreed to stay with the children, and I packed in such a hurry that I barely remembered what I’d put in my suitcase.
I called Ryan twice.
