At twenty minutes, he finally got out. I thought it was over. I actually let out my breath.
It was not over.
He walked up and stood too close to her. Closer than you stand to a stranger. He asked where she was headed. He asked whose car it was. He asked how long she had lived at the address printed on the paper.
“Forty-six years.”
“Forty-six years,” he said, “and you never got yourself a real license.”
That was when he held it up to the sun. That was the library line, and the little laugh through his nose.
Then he asked her if she was on any medication. He asked her if she knew what day it was.
My face went hot. I felt it all the way down my neck. He was talking to my mother like she was a confused old woman who had wandered away from a nursing home.
