I woke up early the next morning just as the sun was coming up, and I tried to be quiet as I moved around my room and made my first attempts at organizing and packing up all the clothes I had brought. After a few minutes I realized I was hearing noise from the kitchen. My mother must already be up, and if she was in the kitchen, maybe it was a good sign that she still felt good.

I was walking down the hallway toward the kitchen when suddenly I froze. I heard a soft, fast rasping sound that reminded me of a rattlesnake’s rattle. I looked around but saw nothing out of place, and the noise seemed to be coming from the kitchen anyway. It was fading but still present as I rounded the corner and saw my mother standing at the sink, looking out the window.

The noise seemed to be coming from her, as insane as that sounds. The feeling that she was somehow making the sound was reinforced when it cut off as she turned and looked at me, her eyes sharp and bright. “Good morning, sleepy head. I made breakfast.”

My mind was racing throughout the meal. I kept trying to think of some way to ask her about it, but I couldn’t think of anything that didn’t make me sound crazy or foolish. Yet as we made idle chit-chat and I talked about my plans when I got back to work, I came to realize the real reason I wouldn’t mention it to her.

I was afraid of her now.

Something was different than it had been before. More than her new found health and energetic demeanor, more even than the strange, dangerous sound I fucking know came from her before she realized I was there. She was just…wrong somehow.

By ten I had my stuff packed and was about to go inside for the last time to say good-bye. My hopes were that, given time and distance, I would realize I was just stressed and stir-crazy and I could go back to just being happy that my mother was okay. It was as I was turning away from the back of my car that I realized that, in the excitement of the day before, we had never gotten the walker from where it lay near the mailbox.

Seeing it made me feel a surge of guilt and relief. I was just being silly. Whatever the reason, she was doing better. She wasn’t shackled to this thing any more, and God willing, she wouldn’t ever have to…

I was bending down to pick up the walker when my gaze wandered to the storm drain that ran under the driveway. My mother’s dead eyes were staring back at me.