Page 90 of Love & Other Disasters

Two months had passed since Violet had last spoken to J.P. She hadn’t once responded to any of his messages and he’d lost hope that she’d come around once she’d calmed down. It’d been a mistake listening to Brent not to go to Pure Botanicals to talk to her. He’d lost the opportunity for a grand gesture and now suffered going home alone every night.

At least his employees had started to come around and not act like he was evil. Not like they had much of a choice on whether or not to speak to him. Although, Monique was the lone holdout. There was a good chance she was the only one of them still in contact with Violet.

His phone buzzed and he grabbed it off the desk, but it was Ethan. J.P. grumbled and answered.

“Just wanted to let you know Mom’s in the hospital.”

“Is she okay? What happened?”

“Well… the thing is… she was lost in the woods last night.”

“Excuse me?”

“Oh, don’t worry, they found her like an hour ago.”

“Our mom was lost in the woods overnight and you didn’t think to call me?”

“Man, I have more stuff in my life than to update you on every little thing that happens here.”

J.P. inhaled sharply, clenching the phone. “I will kick your ass,” he said through gritted teeth.

“All the way from wherever the hell you’re at now? Sure you will.”

“I’m getting the next flight out.” He disconnected the call and grabbed his laptop.

Four hours later, he tossed his bags onto the passenger seat of a rented subcompact car. The company didn’t have anything larger on such a short notice, and it was what driving a clown car must be like.

After the useless conversation with his brother, he spoke to his aunt and found out that his mom was in a small hospital in Glencoe. While they’d lived in Chicago when he was a kid, their mom moved to the small suburb after she’d sold her salons during his second year in grad school. As a thirty year old, it was the sort of town he wished he’d grown up in. But back then, he would have considered it boring.

Aunt Linda had also clued him in on the previous evening in which his mom went for a walk and didn’t come home. A neighbor noticed the front door open wide and called the police out of concern. A search party was sent out, but suspended when it became too dark. That morning, they resumed and discovered her in the woods on the north end of town. She’d fallen and sustained a broken hip and other injuries. Why she’d left the front door open was anyone’s guess, but at least it had alerted someone else to an issue.

When he met up with Linda in the hospital waiting room, he’d been traveling for little over five hours. Not bad timing, but he was running on pure adrenaline.

“She’s still in surgery,” Linda said. “Should be almost done by now.”

“For the hip?” he asked.

“Yes.” Then she looked at him, shaking her head. “Look at you,” she said. “My god. It’s been years.” She grabbed him into a hug.

Aunt Linda was a tall woman, almost his height, and her hair once a dark rich brown now flecked with salt and pepper. Linda was a little older than his mother, around sixty-three to his mom’s sixty. She’d recently had a birthday, and he’d sent flowers. But flowers weren’t going to cut it now.

“Hasn’t it been a long time for a hip surgery?”

She shook her head. “There was an MRI first. They wanted to check her brain.”

“What happened to her hip?”

“The search and rescue guy said they had to pull her out of a hole,” she said, returning to her seat.

“What about hypothermia? It’s pretty cold here.”

“Some. But nothing severe from what I understand.”

“Have you been able to talk to her?”

“No.”

J.P. sat next to Linda and put his head in his hands, massaging his temples. “Where’s Ethan?”

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