“They’re all gone, Ma.”

She blinked up at him, then down at the plastic ID band on her wrist. “What am I doing here?”

“You were a patient here. You had cancer.”

“You lie.”

“It’s true, Ma. Twenty years ago.”

“Oh,” she said in a small child’s voice. She let the flashlight slip to the floor, her veined and spotted hands going up to cover her face. Calhoun stood there for a moment, then put his arms around the round, broad haunch of her shoulders. Her hospital gown was as soft as his childhood pajamas, the one with the little breast pocket just big enough for a Matchbox car.

“Mm.” She withdrew with a sniff. “Drinking again. I can smell it on you.”

“Ma, please.”

“Well, I suppose you come by it honestly.”

“Leave Dad out of it.”

“Your father?” She scowled, creating a little flesh-cushion between her eyebrows. “Drinking was the one thing he didn’t do.”

“But you always said…”

She smiled a sad sweet smile that kept her lips pressed together. “I know what I said.”

Calhoun had never seen her smile like that.

“At first I was just lonely,” she said. “He was never around for us. I’d have one before dinner and another when he didn’t come home. And when he still didn’t come home I just put the bottle by the couch.”

“All that was you?” Calhoun asked. “All those bottles?”

“In the end it didn’t matter how much I had, I could always smell her all over him, her cheap perfume and cigarettes. In the end, he didn’t even try to hide it from me. The signs were everywhere.”

“Ma—”

“He had the gall to tell me I was the one who needed help, can you imagine? After I sat up with you all those nights. I took you to church!” She jerked her head upward, throat tendons stretching the loose flesh in webs. “How you cried for him, Stevie, night after night, wanted him to come home. It got to the point where you couldn’t sleep unless I…”

“Unless you what?”

“Nothing.” She turned slowly around, dragging her IV pole on its squeaking wheels. Calhoun caught up to her.

“Unless you what, Ma?”

“I only gave you little sips,” she said. “Just enough to make you sleepy. Some nights it took more than others.”

“For how long?”

“Go ahead, blame your mother. That’s the thing now, isn’t it?”

“For how many nights, Ma?”

“Oh, so now it’s my fault poor little Stevie needs to be drunk by sunset just to make it through the night.” One crooked eyebrow, badly in need of plucking, arched up. “Poor little Stevie, tell yourself it’s not your fault. Even if poor little Stevie had been sober tonight it wouldn’t have mattered. That doctor would have taken his keys anyhow.”

Calhoun shook his head. “What doctor?”

“Oh, please. Why do you think he wanted you in that room with him tonight, because you were so important?”

“Why would Dr. Walker take my keys?”