“This is the gas tank we took out of your mother’s car. It’s not unusual for gas tanks to corrode little by little over time. And of course around here we’ve got more than our share of moisture and salt. But this car’s not superold, and you can see the gas tank failure is massive. Thing is, it’s rotted from the inside. We had your mother’s car up on the lift a couple of months ago for brake work and there was nothing like this.”

“So what are you saying?”

“This isn’t normal wear and tear. To do this much damage this fast, some kind of strong acid had to have been poured directly into the tank.”

Evie stood there for a moment, blinking at the ruined gas tank and feeling sick to her stomach. The most benign explanation she could come up with was vandalism. More insidious: sabotage.

Evie drove her mother’s car from the gas station directly to the hospital where Ginger was waiting for her to take over. “She hasn’t woken up,” Ginger said when she met Evie outside the ICU. Evie had the impression that Ginger was barely holding it together. “Dr. Foran says she’s in a hepatic coma. She might have some awareness but probably not. I keep talking to her anyway. I want her to know she’s not alone.”

Evie knew it wouldn’t be much longer. Dr. Foran had said patients fell into a hepatic coma days before the end.

“At least she’s breathing on her own,” Ginger said. “She seems calm. They’re giving her pain medication, so I hope she’s not uncomfortable.”

Evie hoped Ginger was right. “Speaking of sick, how’s Tony doing?”

“His fever is down, and he’s not throwing up.” Ginger gave a tired smile. “Life goes on. Which reminds me, did you pick up the car?”

“I did. They couldn’t just patch the tank. They had to replace it. The failure was so massive the mechanic thinks someone must have poured acid into the gas tank.”

“What? But why?”

Evie had been asking herself that same question all the way over. Her mother was an easy target—an alcoholic, already alone and isolated. Take away her car and provide her with an endless flow of vodka, and it was a good bet that she’d go on a prolonged bender.

“I think it’s about the house,” Evie said.

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

“Not the house exactly. The property. Two houses near Mom’s have been leveled in the last few months, the last one right after the owner died. And Mrs. Yetner’s nephew has been trying to get her to sign a life estate deed, signing over her property to the same people who are tearing down houses. You said Mom was excited because she was getting a regular income? That’s part of the deal.”

To Evie’s relief, Ginger didn’t even suggest that she sounded crazy. Still, she seemed a bit skeptical. “So where’s this estate deed, or whatever you call it, that Mom signed? There’d be a record, wouldn’t there?”

Evie wondered why she hadn’t thought of that. Tracing property ownership was a routine part of her work at the Historical Society. “It’s something I can find out.”

“And you say Mrs. Yetner’s nephew is trying to get her to sign one of those agreements?” Ginger said.

“I don’t think he’s getting much traction. Mrs. Yetner is pretty sharp. But I wanted to ask her what she knows about that deed. Do you mind staying with Mom a little bit longer while I go talk to her?”

But when Evie got to Mrs. Yetner’s room, two floors up, she found the bed was empty and the sheets stripped. A nurse was inside, closing the closet door. She turned and saw Evie. “Can I help you?”

“I’m sorry. My friend, Mrs. Yetner? She was in this room? An older woman. She’d dislocated her hip?”

The nurse narrowed her eyes at Evie. “Did reception tell you she was still here?”

“No, no. Nothing like that. I’m sorry.” Evie felt as if she’d been caught wandering the school hallway without a pass. “She’s my neighbor. I visited her here yesterday and I just assumed . . . and today I was here to see my mother and I thought . . . She is all right, isn’t she?”

At that, the nurse finally smiled. “Yes, she’s fine. She left a little while ago. She couldn’t find her glasses and she was very upset, so I came back to see if she left them here.”

While the nurse looked in all the drawers and cabinets, Evie checked under the bed and in the trash can. She knew how frantic Mrs. Yetner would be without her glasses, even for a few hours. That, coming on top of dislocating her hip? It was too much.

“Maybe they got wrapped up in the bedding,” the nurse said. “Otherwise I can’t imagine what happened to them. Glasses.” She shook her head. “That’s not the kind of thing anyone would steal.”

Evie took one final look around the room before following the nurse out. She’d stop over at Mrs. Yetner’s house later that night when she got home. Now she had to get back and spell Ginger.

Evie was waiting for the elevator, pressing the down button a third time even though she knew it would do no good, when a bit of sparkle in the base of a potted plant caught her eye. Using her fingers like tweezers, she reached into a mound of fake moss and pulled out a pair of white cat’s-eye glasses with rhinestones in the corners.

Chapter Forty-six

“For heaven’s sakes, we’ll get you another pair of glasses, Aunt Mina,” Brian said. “Would you stop fretting about them already? It’s not a big deal.”

It was a big deal. Mina was belted into the front seat of Brian’s car, her handbag clutched in her lap. The world whizzing by through the window was a blur. Brian, sitting not three feet away from her, was featureless. If she hadn’t recognized the voice coming out of his mouth, and that distinctive smell of whatever cologne it was that he slathered on himself, she’d have had no idea who was driving.

The car came to a halt. “Where are we?” Mina asked.

“Stopped at a light.”

As if she didn’t know that. After a minute, the car accelerated up an incline, fast. Mina assumed they were on the highway now.

“Now we’re on the Bruckner,” Brian confirmed.

Mina held on to the door handle as the car moved into the left lane and sped along. The car shuddered rhythmically over seams in the pavement. The vibrations made her hip ache. She could feel the changes in pressure as they passed cars and trucks.

By the time Brian pulled up in front of her house, Mina was wrung out. She was desperate for a quiet cup of tea, her own chair, and another of those painkillers they’d given her in the hospital.

A medium-sized white box truck was parked in front of the house. Brian pulled up parallel to it and rolled down the window. “Yo! How’s it going?” he called out.

“We should have it done by the end of the day,” the answer came back. A man’s voice, though to Mina the man himself was nothing more than a tall dark shadow.

Brian pulled his car into the driveway. Mina squinted. It looked like another man was carrying something inside.

“What’s going on?” Mina said.

“The social worker at the hospital told me that the house—the bathroom in particular—isn’t properly set up for you. With the walker, you can barely get in the room. If you end up in a wheelchair, you wouldn’t be able to get through the door. That got me thinking about turning the upstairs into a master suite with its own bath. So that’s what they’re building for you. Wide doorway. Roll-in shower. Grab bars. Slip-proof floor.”

Mina snorted. Sounded like the spiel she’d heard when the woman in the blue suit had shown them one of the rooms at Pelham Manor.

Brian ignored her. “Once it’s done, your health aide can sleep downstairs. We’ll see how it goes, and if we need to install a lift on the stairs, we’ll do that.”

Second-floor bath? Live-in health aide? Stair lift? “How much is all this going to cost?”

“A lot less than the cost of a residential setting, and your insurance will pay for most of it. They’ll be using a prefab unit for the bathroom so it won’t take long to finish the work. Dora will sleep upstairs until the new bath is done and you can move up.”