Breathless (Steel Brothers Saga 10)

“I’d like to see who visited my mother in the last week,” I told the desk clerk after the nurse had come back to give my mother her meds.

“Name?”

“Hers? Daphne Steel.”

“Okay.” He grabbed a clipboard. “Uh…looks like her last visitor was Marjorie Steel last week.”

“That’s me.”

“There you go, then.”

“She said she had a male visitor yesterday.”

“Not possible. Every visitor has to sign in.”

I tapped my fingers on the counter, biting my lower lip. My mother could easily be mistaken. She was mentally ill and lived in her own little reality. She could have imagined a male visitor.

Yet something nagged at me. If she were going to imagine a male visitor, wouldn’t she imagine someone she knew? She said it was my father, but she also said he didn’t look like himself.

“Can you tell me which aide was assigned to her yesterday?” I asked. “The nurse I talked to today said she was off.”

“Uh…sure.” He brought up a different screen on his computer. “Lori was here in the morning, and Barry for the late-afternoon shift. Mary Ann was on night shift, but we don’t allow visitors at night.”

“Is there any way I can get in touch with Lori and Barry?”

“I can’t give out personal information. Sorry.”

I twisted my lips. “All right. When will they be back on duty?”

“Lori is here now. She just clocked in.”

“Great. May I see her?”

“I’ll call her for you. Go wait in the lobby.”

“Sure. Thanks.”

I took a seat in the small waiting area. A few minutes later, a round middle-aged woman greeted me.

“I’m Lori. Are you Ms. Steel?”

I stood and held out my hand. “Marjorie, please. Thank you for talking to me. I understand you were on duty yesterday, caring for my mother?”

“Yeah. Mrs. Steel is never any problem.”

“I’m glad to hear that. I do have a question, though. I just saw my mother, and she says she had a male visitor yesterday. A man with gray hair?”

“Not while I was on the shift, ma’am.”

I truly hated it when older people—or anyone, for that matter—called me ma’am. “She says it was my father, but my father is deceased. And he never had more than a few strands of gray hair.”

“I don’t mean to upset you, Ms. Steel, but she probably imagined it.”

“She definitely could have, but wouldn’t she have imagined my father as she remembered him? She even said he’d grown shorter. How does that make any sense?”

“She’s not well, ma’am.”

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I knew all that. And I had to remember that she saw Dale and Donny as young Joe and Talon, despite the fact that the boys were green-eyed and blond. Still, something niggled at me. “Do you know when Barry is coming in?”