I Don't Forgive You

told me to stay off Tinder. Do you think he had me confused with someone else?”
“You know, there are a lot of fake Tinder profiles,” she says. “People set them up to try to get money from suckers.”
“I’m not on Tinder.” The exit for Damascus comes into view. I’m in rural Montgomery County now, just thirty miles outside D.C., where working farms outnumber office buildings.
“Maybe you don’t think you are, but maybe there’s a fake profile on you.”
“So you think there might be a fake Tinder profile of me? And that’s what this guy saw?”
“Definitely. Happened to my friend Lola.” Confidence has always flowed from Krystle, justified or not. “They took some nude photos of her that she did when she was young and made a fake Tinder account.”
“Who is they?” I turn onto Flamingo Lane, which curves through open pastures.
“Umm, hello, the Russians? Do you, like, even read the news? You should check on Tinder and see. I bet it’s some photo they’ve grabbed off some website.”
“I can’t check. You need to have a Facebook account to look at Tinder profiles, and I don’t want to link mine to it. Can you look into it for me?”
Through the phone, I hear the scream of an ambulance, and it makes me miss living in the anonymous chaos of a big city. For a moment, I experience a pang of longing, not just for Krystle’s life—which seems so uncomplicated compared to mine—but for the way mine used to be. “Hello, you still there?”
She takes a loud slurp of coffee. “You want me to search Tinder for your fake account?”
“Please?”
“You know there’s an app you can download; it’s for suspicious spouses. I saw it on The Today Show.”
I swallow a hard sigh. Krystle has always been this way, clever yet resistant to any kind of work, doubly so if it is someone else’s idea.
“Take a look, please. A fake Tinder account makes more sense than my other theory.” I pull into the Morningside House of Damascus parking lot and find a spot under a large oak tree that has yet to lose its leaves.
“Why, what was your other theory?”
“That this Rob guy knew me, from Connecticut.”
“Why would you think that?”
“Well, he called me Lexi.” From the corner of my eye, I see a woman and two children approach the building with a large bouquet of flowers. Flowers. Next time, I will bring Sharon some.
“That’s weird. Why would he call you Lexi?”
“I don’t know. I thought, maybe he went to Overton or something? But he’s older, so he wouldn’t have been at school the same time I was.”
She laughs. “Well, don’t ask me. Older guys were your thing, Allie. Not mine.”
When I don’t respond, she lets out a gruff laugh. “Oh, come on, you’re so sensitive, Allie. Learn to take a joke.”
“I’m here now. Bye, Kris.” I hang up and grab the basket. Everything’s a joke with her. But she’s right that everything that has happened in the last twelve hours has left me feeling sensitive.
I wait at the front door for the concierge—the facility’s choice of word—to buzz me in. The large foyer is straight out of a new model home, with fancy couches flanking a gas fireplace. But the people on those couches are not fancy or new. Beside the sofas, some sit in wheelchairs or hunch over walkers. Many are still clad in pajamas, hair unkempt. I take a deep breath and push last night’s drama out of my head. I need all my mental energy to steel myself for whatever condition I might find Sharon in.
On entering her room, the first thing I notice about my mother is that she has lost weight. She’s always been slender, but now her peacock-blue wrap dress, more appropriate for a nightclub circa 1984 than an assisted living facility, falls from her frame like it’s on a hanger, exposing deep clavicles.
The second thing I notice is the yellowish bruise on her neck.

 10
I try not to act alarmed as guilt washes over me. She’s been convinced that someone is after her, a concern I had dismissed as dementia. But last week, she had a scratch, and now this. This makes two injuries in two weeks.
I put the bag of goodies on a table and walk over to the vanity, where she is teasing her thinning champagne-colored hair in front of the mirror.
“Sharon, what’s going on with your neck?”
“Oh, this thing? I hate it.” She looks up and catches my eye. Her long fingers flutter to the oval bruise on her slender neck. It’s the exact shape and size of a thumb, as if someone had been trying to take her pulse and pressed way too hard. “I woke up with it. I tried to cover it with makeup, but this concealer is crap. I need the stuff they use on movie sets. Can you get that for me, Alexis? They sell it at Dan’s Beauty Supply.”
“Sure, I can do that.” Dan’s is about a twenty-minute drive from where we used to live in Connecticut. But I don’t remind her that we now live in Maryland. I play along. All the experts say to do this with people suffering from dementia.
“I would say we should walk there, but I don’t want to leave the house in case Georges comes by.”
“Georges?” I have not heard that name in years. He was Sharon’s boyfriend during my ninth- and tenth-grade years. A club promoter who drank Dubonnet on the rocks and smelled like mint and salami. As far as I know, Georges has not been resurrected after dying in a three-car pileup on the Merritt Parkway about ten years ago. “You’re expecting Georges?”
“I don’t trust her.”
“Who don’t you trust, Sharon?”
“She brings me Dots, but she doesn’t fool me.” She points to a jumbo-size box of Dots on her vanity, the kind you find at the movie theater. Not the size I buy at the grocery store.
“Where did you get those?” I pick up the box. “Sharon, can you