Chapter 35
Alice
“She’d already started to lose trust in her memory by that point.
I think that’s partly why she didn’t deny taking the jewelry,” Dominic explained in the same smooth, detached tone he’d been using since we got back into his car.
“You add to that all the confusion and paranoia… it really fucks with you. The paranoia, especially. It doesn’t show up until later stages for most people, but then again, most people aren’t diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s at forty-three. Lightning struck twice with her.”
We’d been parked outside my building for twenty minutes. The ride itself had been just under two hours, and I still had questions. Every time he answered one, three more popped up.
“That’s why we left. Believe it or not, I wasn’t the one who suggested it.
She called me while I was at school, hysterically crying about being framed by people who wanted to see her go to jail…
I couldn’t even understand what she was saying at first. But as soon as she sent me a picture of the Polaroid, I knew…
Or at least I thought I knew. I got it in my head that you wanted me out of your life so badly, you’d be willing to go after her to make it happen.
Her reaction should’ve raised a flag for me.
I should’ve known something was wrong when I got home and the house had been ripped apart.
She’d been looking for hidden cameras, told me I had one hour to pack all of my essentials.
At the time… I don’t know, I just assumed that’s how long your parents had given us to pack our things before they called the cops or something. ”
I wanted to pull my hair out.
“They didn’t even know you were leaving.” If they had, Dominic and Rosie wouldn’t have made it anywhere near the gates without being intercepted and urged to talk things out.
When we realized they were gone the next morning, we’d all assumed it was temporary. Gampy had assured us that the two of them just needed some space.
The reality didn’t fully register until a few weeks later, when they still hadn’t come back, and our calls were still going straight to voicemail.
“Her pride was hurt,” Dominic said. “The symptoms and everything else aside, she was blindsided by the accusation. She considered you all her family, and it… We argued about it constantly, especially in the first couple of months. She wanted to forgive you, talk, but I was… angry, to say the least. I blocked your numbers on our phones, hammered into her head that you’d framed her on purpose because you wanted us gone.
I think, had she not felt so blindsided, had her pride not taken such a massive hit, she wouldn’t have believed me.
But she did. Eventually, she stopped arguing.
” He palmed the wheel again. “I will say, there was a point after her diagnosis where a part of me wondered if maybe she had taken the jewelry during… she’d fall into these sudden bouts of confusion, and I wondered if that was maybe what’d happened.
I kept an eye on it, but she never showed any sort of fixation with accessories or shiny objects. ”
My hand moved to dab at the fresh round of tears streaming down my face, but it barely made it an inch off my lap before flopping back down.
There was no point. I’d been crying on and off for over two hours, my face was raw and swollen, my whole body was aching and depleted, and I just couldn’t see the point.
“It feels like I’ve been hit by a bus,” I muttered, resting my temple against the cool passenger window.
It was late—almost eleven. We’d overstayed our welcome at the residence and then some, until Sage had been forced to gently kick us out.
“It was a lot for one day,” he said sympathetically, reaching over to wipe my cheek.
I leaned into his touch, closing my eyes with a soft, involuntary hum. “Keep going.”
“What else do you want to know?”
Everything, but I didn’t have the energy to come up with any more questions. “Whatever I missed asking.”
His hand fell away. “How about we leave the rest until tomorrow? You’re exhausted.”
“I’d rather do it now.”
“You’re falling asleep.”
“I’m not. Just resting my eyes for a second.”
He sighed. “How about a nightcap? Otherwise, I’m going to fall asleep.”
Nightcap sounded good. Caffeine of any kind sounded very, very good.
My whole body felt like dead weight as I dragged myself out of the car and up the steps. Then he was there, taking all my weight away and putting it on himself.
“There you go,” Dom murmured when we finally made it to my bedroom two decades later. I threw off one sock, then flopped onto the bed with a pathetic whimper that made him chuckle.
“Here.” He dropped to his knees in front of my dangling legs, gingerly grabbed my other foot, and peeled away the remaining sock. “Better?”
A little. “I’m hot.”
“I’ll turn up the AC.”
“No, because then I’ll be cold. Just…” I struggled to shrug out of my sweater, completely out of breath by the time I managed to throw the stupid thing aside. “What’s wrong with me? Why am I so tired?”
“Maybe because you didn’t sleep last night.”
“Neither did you.” And he didn’t seem to be fighting to keep his words coherent and unslurred.
“Yes, but I’m not in shock.”
I frowned. “I’m not in shock. Why do you think I’m in shock?”
“Your eyes have been going in and out of focus ever since we got out of the car.”
Had they? Maybe it was because of my jeans. The denim was scraping against my skin, and I felt damp everywhere, and why the hell was it so goddamn hot in here?
“Help,” I pleaded weakly. My joints were losing their structural integrity at an alarming rate. My muscles had thawed into gelatin.
What was happening?
“It’s okay, I got it.” I relaxed when his fingers hooked underneath my waistband, a fresh, more pleasant bout of warmth pulsing through me. He stripped them off my legs with a rough swallow, keeping his gaze fixed on my nightstand as he folded the denim.
Bummer.
I really liked it when his eyes were on me.
“Dom?”
“What?” There was a new, almost pained, edge to his voice. I wanted him to come here so I could fix it.
“Do you have any more secrets that you’re keeping from me?”
“A few,” he admitted, placing my folded clothes on a nearby armchair. “You?”
“A few.” I tilted my head, practically ogling him. “You want to know what they are?”
He quirked a brow, finally meeting my gaze. “What’s the catch?”
“Nothing.” For once, there was no catch. For once, I wanted him to know exactly what I was thinking and feeling. Because, for once, I wasn’t scared.
The worst possible thing had already happened.
“I just don’t want to keep secrets anymore,” I whispered. “This was… this whole day was pretty fucking horrible, and I never want to go through it again, so I’m just going to tell you everything.”
I’d already lost him once by keeping all these stupid, inconsequential secrets as a means of protecting my own ego, and like hell I was going to make the same mistake twice.
He scratched at his jaw. “I know you don’t think you’re in shock—”
“I’m not in shock.”
“Right. But just so you’re aware, a lack of self-censorship can be a symptom of someone who is.”
I studied him in the soft moonlight, my fingers twiddling over my stomach. “And how is it that you know so much about potential symptoms of shock?”
His gaze fell to the floor as he palmed the back of his neck. “It’s late, so I should probably… I don’t think it’s a good idea to leave you alone, so I’ll just take one of the guest beds or the couch again if you’re…”
“Which ones did you have? Which symptoms, I mean?”
His lips pressed together for a moment. He dropped his hand. “Denial was the big one. But it, uh, it started before her diagnosis and lingered for… longer than I care to admit. The shock just really exacerbated it.”
I waited for a bit, then, “You wanna talk about it?”
He gave a harsh, self-deprecating laugh. “I don’t think you want to hear about it.”
“Try me.”
It took a few minutes, but he eventually caved and slowly moved to sit beside me on the bed.
“I didn’t believe the first specialist. She was only forty-three; it didn’t make sense.
So we got a second opinion. And then a third.
A fourth, and… I dropped out of college so I could do my own research because I was convinced that every doctor in the country was either a brainwashed idiot who couldn’t differentiate their head from their own ass or straight up lying to us.
It became an obsession. I stopped sleeping, dragged her to a bunch of unregulated memory clinics all over the world, made her go through testing she didn’t want, and wasted all her savings trying to find a cure that wasn’t there instead of just…
being with her, talking to her while she was still herself. ”
A sharp ache squeezed my chest when his chin dipped lower. I was sitting up before I even knew my body had moved, resting my head on his shoulder and looping my arms around his waist.
“All that money could have… the least I could have done was let her enjoy her fucking life. But I wouldn’t listen.
She tried, and I wouldn’t… then it got so bad that I couldn’t hide behind the denial anymore.
I got out of the shower one morning, and my keys were gone.
We’d already sold her car to fund another bullshit trial that I can’t…
I don’t even remember what it was anymore.
But anyways, she… my dad’s Toyota was wrapped around a pole.
I’m not sure how she managed to walk away from that with a broken arm and nothing else, to be honest. We were really fucking lucky. ”