A man sitting near the window pointed at Maddie.
“Pancake girl!”
Maddie groaned. “One time.”
“You burned six.”
“Five.”
“Six.”
Frances whispered, “It was absolutely six.”
A man sitting near the window pointed at Maddie.
I stared at my daughter.
The pancakes.
The movies.
The late nights.
She hadn’t invented them.
She’d only changed the address.
***
Carol led us into a quieter courtyard while Frances stayed with the older woman, her grandmother.
Three weeks earlier, Carol explained, her mother had moved into memory care.
Frances had taken it badly.
She’d only changed the address.
“Grandma practically raised me,” Frances said when she eventually joined us. “Then one day she looked at me and asked when Frances was coming.”
She wiped her cheek angrily.
“I was sitting right there.”
So Maddie started coming with her.
The first Friday became another.
Then another.
“I was sitting right there.”
I turned to Maddie.
