Harrumph

My mother-in-law, Clara, was near tears as she spoke to me on the phone. “Somebody stole my car!”

“How did that happen?” I asked.

“I drove down the street and got out of the car to walk Sassy, but when I walked back to the car, it was gone.”

By that point, Clara didn’t even have keys to the car, so I knew it was her Alzheimer’s talking. “Could you look in your garage just to make sure that your car didn’t somehow come home?”

She made a “harrumph” sound that I had previously only read about in books. I heard the door from the kitchen to the garage open and then close. “My car isn’t in the garage.” Her tone definitely implied an “I told you so.”

“Okay.” I sighed. “We’ll head that way.”

My husband, Don, and I drove the 40 minutes to Clara’s house. We looked in the garage, and there was her car parked right where it should have been. “Mom, your car is in the garage,” Don said.

She followed him out there. “That’s not my car. My car is gray.”

“No, your old car was gray, remember?” I told her. “You traded it in for a blue one.”

On the drive home, Don and I replayed my earlier conversation with Clara. I’d asked if her car was in the garage, and she said that her car was not in the garage. I hadn’t asked her if any other car was in the garage. Harrumph, indeed.