Ezoic
Gabby smiled.
“My parents came back,” she said. “Every year. On my birthday. June 9. We’d drive all the way from Chicago. And we’d stay at the Prairie Rest. And Jean would make me a birthday cake. Every year. Chocolate with white frosting. With my name on it in blue.”
“Every year?”
“Every single year. Until I was eighteen.” She wiped her eyes. “Jean came to my high school graduation. And my nursing school graduation. She sat in the front row and cried louder than my mom.”
“You became a nurse.”
“Labor and delivery,” Gabby said. “Like her. How could I be anything else?”
She looked down at the key.
“Three years ago, Elmer called me,” she said. “He said Jean was getting worse. He said she’d started wandering at night. He said she kept going into Room 18 and asking for Marisol. He didn’t know what to do. He said I was the only person she ever asked for.”
