The store was completely silent. Every person in it. Priya, Kelsey, Brianna, the three customers who had stopped pretending to look at anything else a long time ago.
Lena’s eyes were wet. She was holding them back, but they were there. She said slowly, “How is your mother?”
He said, “She is well. She is in Delaware now.” Lena was quiet for a moment.
He said, “How is yours?” Lena’s face shifted. She said, “She is not well. Her heart.
She doesn’t leave the apartment much anymore. She gets tired very fast, but she is still here.
She is still fighting. He nodded. He said, “I need to come with you.” Lena looked at him, a stranger, a man she had met 20 minutes ago in a cake shop, asking to come to her mother’s home, claiming to know things about her mother’s past that she had never heard before.
She said, “I don’t know you.” He said, “I know that. I know you have no reason to trust what I have just told you, but I have been carrying a debt to your mother for 28 years, and I looked for her twice and lost track both times, and I am standing in front of her daughter right now, and I cannot let today end without doing something about this.
He said, “Please.” Lena looked at the jar in her hands. She looked at the man in front of her.
He was not performing anything. He was not selling her anything. He had the expression of a person who has been waiting to say something for a very long time and has finally found the right door.
She thought about her mother sitting in the chair by the window. The way Dolores had been sitting in that chair more and more in recent months because standing wore her out.
The way she still cooked sometimes even when it tired her. The way she still asked about everyone else first before she would admit how she was feeling.
Lena looked at him. She said she is going to say you are being too much.
The corner of his mouth moved, the smallest beginning of a smile. He said, “I know.”
She said, “She never accepted anything from anybody without an argument.” He said, “That does not surprise me in the least.”
A long moment, Lena picked up her cloth bag. She said, “Okay.” Before they left, Linton turned back to the counter.
He walked to where Priya was standing, Kelsey beside her, Brianna a half step back.
