She spun around, and I could feel the anger radiating from her. “Carolyn, how could you talk to Mack like that?” she snapped, her arms wrapped tightly across her chest. “Can’t you understand that there must be some terrible problem that is keeping him from us? Can’t you understand that he must be feeling frightened and helpless and that this call is a cry for understanding?”

Before my father died, they often used to have emotional conversations like this. Mom, always protective of Mack, my father getting to the point where he was ready to wash his hands of it all and stop worrying. “For the love of God, Liv,” he would snap at Mom, “he sounds all right. Maybe he’s involved with some woman and doesn’t want to bring her around. Maybe he’s trying to be an actor. He wanted to be one when he was a kid. Maybe I was too tough on him, making him have summer jobs. Who knows?”

They would end up apologizing to each other, Mom crying, Dad anguished and angry at himself for upsetting her.

I wasn’t going to make a second mistake by trying to justify myself. Instead I said, “Mom, listen to me. Since we haven’t found Mack by now, he’s not worrying about my threat. Look at it this way. You’ve heard from him. You know he’s alive. He sounds downright upbeat. I know you hate sleeping pills, but I also know your doctor gave you a prescription. So take one now and get some rest.”

I didn’t wait for her to answer me. I knew I couldn’t do any good by staying with her any longer because I was angry, too. Angry at her for railing at me, angry at Mack, angry at the fact that this ten-room duplex apartment was too big for Mom to live in alone, too filled with memories. She won’t sell it because she doesn’t trust that Mack’s annual telephone call would be bounced to a new location, and of course she reminds me that he had said one day he would turn the key in the lock and be home…Home. Here.