Past the card room was an exercise room where women and a few men sat in two rows of chairs. According to Mina’s guide, they were “enjoying a session of chair yoga.” As Mina watched them look up at the ceiling, down into their laps, curl and stretch, she realized that she’d probably enjoy it, too.

All in all, it wasn’t so bad, really. It didn’t smell terrible. No one was muttering, or marching along like a zombie, or disrobing in the hallway. Mina had witnessed all three on the floor where Annabelle had been installed.

Continuing on, they passed a hall table, its top strewn with flower petals surrounding a carefully calligraphed card that read Dearly Departed. Beside the card was a framed photograph of a woman smiling and looking directly at the camera, her hand to her cheek. Perched on her head was a party hat in the shape of a tiara—just the kind of goofy thing Mina would never be caught dead wearing. But from the woman’s lively expression, it looked as if she was in on the joke.

Below the picture was a name and a room number and the date, May 17. Three days ago.

Farther down a corridor and beyond double doors were the rooms. The woman walked ahead with Brian at her side. They were chatting. Brian turned and motioned for Mina to hurry up. But just then a young woman came out into the corridor from one of the rooms. She turned back, holding the door open, talking and nodding.

Inside, Mina could see a cozy room with ruffled white curtains, a well-worn leather lounge chair, and a bed neatly made with a finely crocheted spread like one tucked away in Mina’s linen closet that she didn’t dare use for fear Ivory would have at it. Which reminded her, would they let her bring Ivory? It gave her a stomachache imagining Ivory being dumped at an animal shelter.

A woman in a wheelchair sat facing the door, so stooped she was bent near double, her thin white hair tucked into a bun at the nape of her neck. Beside her was a piecrust-top table crowded with framed photographs and porcelain figurines. The young woman at the open door said something to her, and the old woman craned her neck in order to look up. Her face reminded Mina of a shriveled apple. Eyes sharp. She was starting to say something when the young woman let go of the door and walked off down the hall.

It seemed to Mina as if the door closed in slow motion with the old woman sitting there, talking to no one, until finally she was shut in that room, utterly alone with only a television, pictures of loved ones, and a window overlooking a parking lot. In a few weeks or months, a picture of her smiling gamely at the camera would be sitting on the Dearly Departed table. And the cozy room she was in would be filled with someone else’s memories.

It was the thing no one wanted to talk about. People came to places like this to die. Even after they’d finished their tour and were riding down in the elevator Mina was still shaken, thinking about the woman in the wheelchair.

Assisted living? Pfff. If she came here, it would be to die, tidily and off camera, as inexorably as the elevator she was in was going down.

Chapter Thirty-six

“Next stop, Golden Oaks. It’s not far,” Brian said in a cheery, much too loud voice back in the lobby. He held Mina’s coat for her, and dutifully Mina threaded her arms through the sleeves. But her mind kept replaying the door closing on the old woman.

Brian handed Mina her cane. “You know, I think I’d like to go home,” she said.

“Home? Home?” The word exploded from Brian’s mouth and echoed in the empty space, and Brian looked around guiltily. “But you promised,” he continued more quietly. “We’ve made appointments.”

“You made the appointments. You keep them. I am going home.” And before Brian could protest, Mina started for the door. On her way out, she tossed the envelope with the material she’d never requested in a trash bin.

She assumed Brian would come chasing after her, shouting and struggling to put on his own coat. Offering to bring the car around and putting his hand out like she’d just fork over her car keys. But when she turned and looked back, there he was, still inside, talking on his cell phone. Gesturing with his free hand like he was explaining something, or maybe apologizing. That was the one thing that, at her age, Mina rarely felt the urge to do.

The pavement outside was wet. She stepped out from under the front awning and into a steady drizzle. A car stopped so she could cross the circular drive and continue at a brisk pace into the parking lot and down the center aisle, her cane tapping sharply on the macadam. Three rows in, she turned right and walked past car after nondescript car. When she was nearly at the end of the row, she realized her car wasn’t there. She turned around, and around again, checking the adjacent row for her car’s distinctive silhouette.

Keys clutched in her hand, she started to retrace her steps more slowly now. Stopped. She remembered exactly where she’d parked—right in that spot where a dark red van was now parked. Or was it the spot next to it where there was a black pickup truck?

She looked up and down the row. Or maybe it was farther along? She took a few steps in that direction.

“Aunt Mina!” It was Brian, calling to her from the start of the row. “Don’t you remember? You parked over here.” He pointed in the opposite direction.

What? Mina could have sworn this was right. Could she have gotten completely turned around?

“Come on!” Brian gestured for her to follow him.

Mina had started toward him when she heard an engine rumble. Startled, she turned and stumbled, barely catching herself from falling. All she could see was the bed of the pickup truck coming at her, white backup lights glowing in the rain.

Mina put her hands up, as if she could actually stop a two-thousand-pound vehicle with her bare hands. In a flash of coherence, as she went down hard she thought, Please, not my other hip.

The next thing she knew, she was on the ground. Somehow she’d managed to get out of the truck’s path. The truck peeled out without so much as slowing down, leaving behind the smell of exhaust. Through the side of her head she felt more than heard running footsteps.

“Aunt Mina, are you all right?” Brian’s voice came from a blurry figure standing over her. Mina realized she’d lost her glasses, and she patted the ground around her. Her cane and purse and car keys had gone flying, too. “What kind of idiot backs up without even looking? Asshole.”

Watch your language, young man. The voice in Mina’s head was her mother’s, but she knew it was exactly what Annabelle would have said, too.

Brian knelt beside her. “Aunt Mina? Are you all right?”

Her hip throbbed, and her heart was banging like a jackhammer. Each time she tried to breathe, it felt as if a fist pressed against her breastbone.

“You’re white as a sheet.” His words came to her slowly, as if pushing their way through a fog.

Mina tried to say, I’m fine. But she couldn’t get the words to come out of her mouth.

“I’m calling an ambulance.”

Mina did not want to go to the hospital. Nine times out of ten, you came out sicker than you went in, if you came out at all. She gasped for breath, still unable to say a word. Finally, she managed to croak out a small, weak, “No!”

“Hello? Emergency?”

“No!” This time she sounded louder. Mina wiped a strand of hair from across her eyes. She took a breath.

“Lie still,” Brian said. “You might have broken something.”

“Don’t you think I’d know if I’d broken something?” Mina snapped. Her elbow and knees felt raw, and she thought she might be bleeding. But she’d survived plenty of skinned knees and elbows. Gingerly she flexed her wrists. Rotated her shoulders. Lifted her head off the wet pavement. “Put that fool thing away,” she said, “and help me find my eyeglasses. I’m fine.”