Mom’s Lawn Chair on My Sister’s Dock

Ava sat right down on the dock beside the chair, cross-legged, with her hand on Mom’s knee.

Kyle set Cole down on the other side, and Cole leaned against the chair leg and put his head on Mom’s foot like a puppy.

They stayed there all evening. The sun went down orange behind the cypress trees, and the lake turned pink and then purple and then dark, and the frogs started up in the reeds.

At nine o’clock, the fireworks started over in Leesburg, at Venetian Gardens, across the water.

The first one went up white and opened over the lake, and a second later we heard the boom roll across to us. Cole jumped and grabbed Mom’s ankle.

“It’s all right, sugar,” Mom said. She put her hand on his head. “That’s just the town saying happy birthday to the country. They do it every year.”

They came one after another after that, red and green and the big gold ones that fall slow like willow branches. Every one showed twice, once in the sky and once in the black water.

Ava kept a count out loud. She lost track somewhere past thirty and started over. Mom helped her.

Cole fell asleep against her foot before the finale, with his mouth open and one hand still holding the hem of her slacks.

Partway through, I felt somebody sit down on the dock behind me. It was Denise. She had walked all the way out by herself. She did not say anything.

She just sat down on the boards a few feet from Mom’s chair, with her knees pulled up under her white dress, and watched the fireworks.

Mom did not look at her. But after a while, I saw her reach her hand down, off the arm of the chair, toward the boards where Denise was sitting.

Denise looked at it for a long moment. Then she took it.

They sat that way through the finale, my mother and my sister, holding hands at the end of the dock while the whole sky lit up over Lake Harris. Nobody said anything. There was nothing anybody needed to say.

When it was over, Kyle carried Cole up to the truck still asleep. Ava walked beside Mom, holding her cane hand, very proud to be helping.

Denise walked us to my car. At the door, she hugged Mom for a long time, careful of her hip. Then she straightened up and looked at me over Mom’s head.

“Monday,” she said. “Whatever she needs. Whatever you need me to sign.”

“Monday,” I said.

I went back for the chair. Mom stopped me.

“Leave it,” she said.

On Monday morning, I took a personal day and picked Mom up at nine.

We drove to the credit union on Main Street, the same one where it started. I parked in the same spot. Neither of us mentioned it.

Mom had called on Sunday to make the appointment herself. The branch manager was waiting with a notary and two employees to act as witnesses. Florida wants a new power of attorney signed in front of both, and the credit union did the revocation the same careful way.

Mom signed a written revocation of the power of attorney she had given Denise. Then she signed a new one, naming me.

The manager made copies of both, took Denise’s name off the account for good, and handed me Denise’s copy of the revocation to deliver that afternoon.

“There,” she said, and capped the pen. “Now. Let’s go see about the rest of it.”