I was living in a small one bedroom apartment, and since Mom was staying with me I had been sleeping on the couch at nights. This particular night Genesee was also there, and she had already fallen asleep on my couch so I was trying to sleep in the recliner but Mom kept coming out and using the phone. It was keeping me awake, but it wasn't bothering Genesee, as I was doing my best to make sure Mom remembered that someone else was sleeping in the apartment.
The most recent phone call, the one that had woken me back up, was actually when Dad called from work to talk to her. I could overhear his end of the conversation, and he was talking to her about how he had gotten time off of work because he had won a free trip to Florida for all of us, and he was giving her all of the details.
Mom was getting a little bothered though, because she thought that he was telling her that she had to move to Florida by herself, so I ended up taking the phone from her so I could get the details and then relay the correct information to Mom. He needed to know our social security numbers for the prize forms, because they wouldn't issue him the plane tickets until they had all of our information.
By the time I got off of the phone, Mom had left the apartment. Since it was the middle of the night and really dark out, I tried to wake Genesee so she could help me figure out where she went, but since Gen had just traveled all day to get to the apartment - she was whupped and I couldn't wake her up.
I apparently lived in a rough part of whatever town I was in, because when I went outside it reminded me of a dark version of what John Constantine sees in that movie when he takes his trips to hell. Wind was blowing, ash and dirt was coming off of everything, not a living soul in sight... no way to know which direction Mom went.
I remember thinking how odd it was that we were trying to plan a vacation, trying to do something fun, when all of this other bad stuff was going on and Mom was nowhere to be found.
