Page 3 of Wrong Number, Right Unicorn

That made me a little uneasy. Was I walking into a trap?

Chapter 2

Errol

I grabbed my keys and bolted toward my car.

It had been a long-ass day and I’d just gotten home from work a few minutes earlier. I was kicking myself for deciding that today was the day to play catch-up and to get all of the odds and ends finished up without the disruption of coworkers. I wouldn’t have stayed if I had realized Grams was going to need me. She’d been needing me a lot lately; something was kind of off with her. I couldn’t place just what, but it was getting progressively worse.

I thought about calling my parents, but they had long since retired to Arizona. Frankly, I suspected Grams was the reason they left when they did. My dad wanted his retirement to be all leisure and would get frustrated when she asked for any kind of help. My dad was kind of a dick.

Grams left not one, not two, but three messages on my landline answering machine, each one escalating in urgency. When I bought the house from my folks, I kept the landline going because, well, it was my childhood number, and it felt like too big of an end of an era to disconnect it, and it was easy to just add my name and take my parents off.

But now, I saw that phone was much more valuable than just nostalgia, because Grams would use it from time to time. It was the number she remembered—not that she had dementia, but sometimes, she was just off. I tried to get her to talk to the doctor about it, but she insisted she was fine. She was always fine and, quote, “not a fucking child.” My Grams had taken to cursing at her 65th birthday and never looked back.

My parents used to be mortified when she cursed around me, even as an adult, but that was always just Grams. It wasn’t like I’d never heard those words.

The first message she left today just mentioned needing to go to the pharmacy, and that was fine. I didn’t mind driving her. The second one said I needed to quit ignoring her because it was important. Again, not typically my grandmother, but okay. The third was where it got weird and disconcerting. “It’s an emergency!” She shouted it loud and clear, over and over and over again until the time limit was up.

I thought to call her first but realized it was best to just hightail it over there. I barely made it into the driveway, the end of my car sticking over the sidewalk, but I didn’t care. If they wanted to give me a ticket for that, they could. I needed to get inside.

My heart was racing as I sprinted to the door, and when I got in, what was Grams doing? Sitting in her recliner, watching Matlock for the 47,000,000,000th time—and that estimate might’ve been on the low side.

“Grams, you okay?” She hadn’t been when she called but nothing appeared out of the ordinary.

“Hello, dear. How are you? Did you come for some tea?”

“No, Grams, you called me.”

“I did? Yeah, I probably did. You want some tea?”

This caught me off guard because, even though she hadn’t quite been herself lately, this was the opposite of her screaming on the answering machine.

“You know what? I would like some tea.” It would give me an excuse to stay and figure out what was going on with her. I had a feeling I was either going to need to move in with her or help her find an assisted living facility soon, and it broke my heart. She very much wouldn’t do well there, but this erratic behavior was getting progressively more intense, and there might not be another way. “Let me go make us some.”

I went into the kitchen, turned on the kettle, and grabbed the box of her favorite tea. When I opened it, it was empty. I turned around to see Grams in the doorway.

“That’s why you come when I call you the first time.” She had her fist on her hip.

“Are you kidding me, Grams? This is your emergency?” Gods. This day was getting progressively worse.

“It’s Matlock time—I don’t have tea. How can this be considered anything but?”

I didn’t argue with her that Matlock was on all day long, every day, because she had a streaming service where she just picked it.

“Okay, Grams, I’ll go out and get you tea.”

“Nope, I’m coming with you, and on the way there, you can apologize to me for ignoring me.”

I pulled my phone out of my pocket. “Is this the phone you called, Grams?”

She squinted and leaned forward. “You know I don’t like that newfangled stuff.”

“And you know what the problem with calling me at the house is?

“You never answer your phone?”

Which, fair, but no. “Grams, it’s because I’m not always home. I was at work.”

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