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shouldn’t have because Laura didn’t want her mother to be inconvenienced? Or he shouldn’t have because Laura didn’t want Jean there at all? Suddenly Jean felt big and unwieldy, taking too much space in the small room.
    “I want to know when you’re . . . sick,” Jean said defensively. “I’m your mother.”
    The nurse bandaged the back of Laura’s hand and gathered up her trash. “I’ll be back with instructions,” she said, and squeaked out of the room.
    “Yes, but you live four hours away. And I’m not sick. I had too many Bloody Marys,” Laura said, rubbing the back of her hand. “He’s always making such a big deal out of nothing.”
    “But it wasn’t nothing,” Jean said. “You were . . . passed out and . . . your wrist is hurt . . . and you didn’t tell me that you two split up.” Jean realized she was sputtering and not making much sense at all, and once again she wished for Wayne. She always felt calmer when he was nearby, as if he were her voice of reason. He wouldn’t have felt awkward. He would have had no problem making his opinions known. And despite their frequent fights and the cavalier way Laura had treated his death, Laura would have wanted Wayne there; Jean felt sure of it. She would have gathered some strength from him.
    Laura frowned and waved her off, then reached up and felt her hair, gingerly, as if to not mess it up further, if that were even possible. “Come on, Mom—I’m not the first person to drink too much vodka. Curt’s just being a drama queen as usual. I suppose he had Bailey here too.”
    “I never saw her,” Jean said.
    “Oh, trust me, she was here, leaving a path of destruction like always,” Curt said, and Jean and Laura both turned toward the doorway. Laura immediately rolled her eyes and stood up, as if readying for battle.
    “Let’s just go,” she said, bending to retrieve her purse from the chair next to her bed. “I can’t handle being in the same room with him right now.”
    “But you haven’t gotten your release papers yet,” Jean said.
    Again Laura waved her off. “I don’t need someone telling me how to take care of myself. I’ve been doing fine for forty years, and I’ll do fine now.”
    Jean tried not to let the “forty years” part of that comment sting. Did Laura really feel as though she’d always been the one caring for herself? Did she discount everything Jean had ever done? Maybe Jean really hadn’t done enough. Maybe that was part of the problem. Maybe it was all of the problem. Suddenly she wanted to cry—to curl up in Laura’s hospital bed and wrap around a pillow and cry herself to sleep.
    “What about rehab?” Jean asked, and Laura stopped, halfway toward the door, and let her arms droop loose.
    Her eyes flicked from Jean to Curt and back again. “Look. I drank too much on a weekday. It was wrong, I get that. I messed up. Royally. I probably got myself fired. But don’t either of you two act like you’ve never had too much to drink on a Tuesday afternoon. People make lapses in judgment, and that was mine. I’ll fix it. I’m not some street drunk. I’m hardly pissing myself and hallucinating. I don’t need rehab.”
    “Yes, you do,” said a voice from behind Curt, and Jean’s stomach flipped at the sound of it, her weariness and doubt chased away immediately. Curt took a step to the side and there, standing in the corridor right behind him, was a girl Jean instantly recognized as her granddaughter, Bailey.
    “Great,” Laura hissed to the floor.
    “You were supposed to stay in the car,” Curt said.
    “But she does need rehab,” the girl said, her voice ratcheting up a notch.
    Jean gazed at her granddaughter for the first time in years. Thick in the middle, with big bones and fleshy features, a washed-out look as if she too needed sleep, her hair dyed so black it shone blue under the fluorescent hospital lights and cut in blunt, choppy layers. Her jeans were filthy to the point of being