my watch. It was four-thirty in the afternoon.
“You think you’re tenants?” I said softly, in a tone that should have worried them far more than it seemed to. “Let’s see what the law says by nine tonight.”
I took my mother by the hand, led her out to my SUV, loaded her few personal belongings from her tiny garage room, folded neatly into two small bags like she’d been ready to be told to leave at any moment, and drove away from the property without another word to either of them.
My first stop was a high-end residential hotel five miles away. I checked my mother into a luxury suite, ordered her a hot gourmet meal from room service, the first real meal she’d probably had in longer than she’d admit, and hired a private home care nurse to attend to her bruised knees and exhaustion.
I sat with
