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I sang out brightly. “Don’t you want to find that remote?”
    At once, her shoulders relaxed. She stared at me curiously, cocked her head, and held her hands away from the folds of fabric. A black metal rectangle fell to the floor with a clunk. I snatched it up, clicked on WSGA, and set down the remote on the table next to her wheelchair.
    The television blared as she turned her full attention to the weekend report. The lights and colors from the screen illuminated the room and glinted off her wheelchair, casting a glow over Mother. She was mesmerized.
    And we were no longer needed.
    “The only things that make her happy are talkin’ about movie stars, those books she done wrote, and watchin’ that news channel. I jest can’t understand it.” Sharice made a tut-tut sound.
    But I did.
    The entertainers and actresses used to fill my mother’s life. The rich and famous were once her family. She knew them intimately. She told their stories. Mother defined herself as an author. Not as a wife. Not usually as my mother.
    Instead, Daddy and I existed as backdrop to her Hollywood events. We were props, mere stagehands, as she flitted from one opening night to another.
    When Daddy passed away and I left home, Mother was never quite the same. While I lived my own life, she withered slowly, like a hothouse flower lacking proper light or water. Eventually, she stopped writing, and her health failed.
    Her memories, however fleeting, were all she had left.
    Thank goodness my mother and I had Sharice. Other than Candace, there were few people in the world I trusted more.
    Sharice slipped out of Mother’s room unnoticed and I followed behind. The door closed with a quiet click.
    “I know you have your hands full keeping an eye on her,” I said. “How are you? How’s that big boy of yours?”
    Sharice, a young, single mother, grinned and pulled a photo from her front pocket. “I knew you’d be asking ’bout Darius.”
    “Oh, thank you.” I cradled the picture in my palm. Her son was about three, with dark curly hair, light brown skin, and big, blue eyes. “He’s precious! And getting so big.”
    I felt a pang in my chest, missing my own daughter. I forced my lips into a smile at Sharice, who was still talking.
    “He look like his daddy. Handsome. Smart as a whip, that chile. But Gawd knows where that man is,” Sharice stuck out her bottom lip and shook her head. “He disappear the second I said, ‘baby.’ Lawd have mercy.” Sharice snapped her fingers. “Men. They show up, they gone. And like that, we all alone. Just my chile and me.”
    I hugged her goodbye. “At least you have each other,” I said. “That’s what counts now.”
     

Chapter 8
     
    The rush of Monday gave me a temporary reprieve from thinking about Mother, worrying about Chris, and missing Kelly.
    We had a full slate of stories, which meant a busy afternoon. Tensions were high, and somehow our normal staff meeting banter had suddenly morphed into a scene from Clash of the Titans .
    “We’ll lead with the kidnapping attempt.” I pointed at the line-up, marker-bright, on the white-board. “Live shot from the street scene, sound-bites from eyewitnesses, the family, the cops. We can wrap it with local and national stats.”
    Murmurs rose around the room. The troops were restless and wanted assignments.
    Tim Donaldson shook his head. “The school vandalism. It’s visual. An attention-grabber. Someone, probably kids, painted a damn mural on the cafeteria wall.” His gaze scraped across the room. “Have you seen the VO? It’s incredible.”
    Before anyone else could breathe a response, I snatched at the brief lull. “Incredible or not, let’s think about our audience.” The station’s demographics spun through my brain into a neat list. “Our six o’clock viewers. Fifty-seven percent female, twenty-six to fifty years old, affluent. Most are married home-owners with two or more children.” I sucked in my breath and let the numbers sink