Home in Carolina by Sherryl Woods

while Helen had made sure all the bills and business papers were boxed up for the trip. The back of their small SUV rental was jammed with suitcases and cartons.
    Loading the car had been a breeze compared to getting Flo herself settled comfortably. In the backseat, she was surrounded by pillows and covered with a blanket, since she claimed Helen kept the car much too cold. By the time they’d gone twenty miles, she’d grumbled about the temperature, the speed, the bumpiness of the highway, the boring scenery and Helen’s refusal to stay in the left lane.
    For a moment, though, there was blessed silence from the back. Helen dared to hope that they could cover another hundred miles before her mother woke and started in again. She’d like to have lunch north of Savannah. From there it would only be another couple of hours before she’d be in Serenity. Erik, with his seemingly endless amount of patience, could take over.
    “I keep thinking I’ve left something important behind,” her mother said, destroying the rare moment of quiet.
    “Such as?”
    “Well, if I knew that, it wouldn’t keep nagging at me,” Flo said. “It’s not as if I can make a quick trip around the corner to get it.”
    “If you left anything important behind, you can send your friend Betty over to get it. She has the key.”
    “True,” Flo said, “but I don’t know as I want her digging around in my things.”
    Helen rolled her eyes. “Then why’d you give her a key?”
    “Someone needed to have one for emergencies, and she lives closest.”
    “She seemed nice to me. I’m sure she’s perfectly trustworthy.”
    “Of course she is,” Flo said. “She’s just nosy. She’ll use any excuse to go poking around in things that are none of her business.”
    “Mom, we have all of your important papers with us. We have your jewelry, most of your clothes and personal things, even a bunch of knickknacks. What could she possibly discover, a box of condoms in your nightstand?”
    “Helen Decatur-Whitney, that is not amusing.”
    Helen bit the inside of her lip. She thought it had been at least a little bit funny.
    “My relationship with Frank Rogers is not a laughing matter,” Flo added for good measure, which pretty much wiped the beginnings of a smile right off Helen’s face.
    “Frank Rogers?” she repeated in a choked voice. Her mother had been having an affair? Why hadn’t she known about that? “You were involved with a man down there?”
    “I don’t know why you sound so shocked,” Flo said. “It wasn’t serious, for goodness’ sake. If it had been, would I be moving back home?”
    Condoms? A fling with a man named Frank? Helen could barely concentrate on the highway. She now had way too much information about her mother’s life, to say nothing of images that no daughter ought to have of her seventy-two-year-old mother. She needed to get off I–95 and go somewhere she could scream.
    Thankfully there was a sign for a Cracker Barrel at the next exit. Even though she’d hoped to drive a little farther before stopping, she took the exit ramp, followed the signs and found a parking spot that wasn’t too far from the front door.
    “Come on, Mother, let’s have lunch.”
    “I’m not hungry yet.”
    “Well, I am. You can have a cup of coffee and use the restroom.”
    “I don’t need to,” her mother protested.
    “Fine, then just wait for me in the car,” Helen said. She was about to slam the door and walk away, when her mother heaved a sigh and emerged from the car, then wrestled with the walker she’d been told to use.
    Helen assisted her inside, got her settled at a table, gave the waitress an order for a huge breakfast she’dnever be able to eat, then excused herself and practically ran back to the parking lot with her cell phone in hand.
    She considered calling Erik, but given his recent tendency to support her mother, she opted for calling Maddie instead.
    “My mother was having a fling with some man named