Free Trinity by Kristin Dearborn Page A

suspected his mom might be right.
    “I, uh, got my law degree,” Val said, staring at her hand in his. Not that I’ll ever be able to use it for anything .
    “You’ll make a fine lawyer,” Caroline said. “Like your uncle.”
    Nope , Val thought, I sure won’t . He smiled. More gently than was probably necessary, he patted her hand.
    Blaring from the TV, a woman on the Home Shopping Network advised them to call now since only fourteen gold plated brooches with synthetic garnets remained. Outside, fat raindrops plunked against the windows. Alternating rain and patches of sun mottled the valley below.
    “Knock knock,” someone called. Nurse Warder. Angelina. Who, at possibly four foot eight looked nothing like the actress Val had likened her to. “You must be Valentine,” she said; her voice an abrasive coo, and extended a chubby hand up to him. He relinquished his grasp on Caroline and shook.
    “Val,” he said.
    “It’s so nice to finally meet you,” she said, going to check Caroline’s vitals.
    As the nurse made small talk, Val wondered if it was appropriate to discuss his mother’s condition with her here in the room. He didn’t want to talk about her as though she wasn’t here, but he also didn’t know how much she knew. What if she thought she was getting better? Fuck. He hated being around sick people. Of course she knew what was up.
    Val stood, half watching Angelina as she ran through the machines, making small talk with Caroline, who told the nurse Val was back from his Aunt Sally and Uncle Dick’s place back east, half looking out at the valley.
    “Mr. Slade? Val? May I have a moment?”
    “Sure.” He followed her into the cool, sterile hall, with its New Mexico tones of brown; brown and turquoise.
    “She does know where I’ve been, right? Sometimes it feels like she does, sometimes it doesn’t. Like just now she said I was back from Dick and Sally’s. It seemed like she thought I’d been somewhere else.”
    Angelina smiled a smile she’d probably rehearsed for hundreds of patients and family members. It carried the slightest edge of condescension, and Val decided he did not like this woman, no matter how kind her letters had been while he was in jail.
    “I upped her morphine,” she said, as though she were speaking to a child. “Your mother has some rather peculiar ideas.”
    Val said nothing.
    “In her lucid moments, she knows you were incarcerated, and she knows why. As you noticed, sometimes she thinks you were still in Connecticut—”
    “Massachusetts.”
    “—with your family. But sometimes…she has this notion.” Angelina made a clucking noise. “That she’s been abducted by aliens .” She paused, waiting for a reaction. When she got none, she continued. “And she seems to think you’d been abducted, too.”
    “Yeah, I know all about it. The book?”
    Angelina smiled like a sphinx. He wished he hadn’t said anything. But he did, so he plowed forward.
    “Did you read it?” he asked. “I actually haven’t, but I’ve heard all the stories. I really appreciated that they didn’t use her real name when it was published. Most folks around here know the story.”
    “Which book do you mean?” Angelina asked. He couldn’t tell if she was playing dumb, or thought she was being polite.
    “Trinity , of course. The book about my mother.”
    “I skimmed it. I can only imagine she was in quite a state when she wrote it. Alcoholism is a terrible disease, and even then she probably had some of the early symptoms of the cancer.”
    He rubbed a hand across his face. No one in the jail knew about his mother’s book, and he was thankful. He’d told Felix one night, a nocturnal admission of secrets. By the time Felix walked out of there, Val had told him every minute detail about his own life. That was why it was so weird to see him again. Like a walking journal uprooted from its context.
    His mother’s fantasies always managed to follow him.
    * * *
    He remembered a