Chapter 54
THE PIECES WE SALVAGE
NOLAN
The smell hits first. Faint bleach, fresh-baked bread, and florals. The lavender air freshener doesn’t quite cover the underlying weight of time passing too fast.
I push through the double doors into the lobby of Ridge Hollow Senior Living, my steps automatically slowing like the place itself demands it. Muted lighting. Soft colors. A hushed quiet meant to soothe frayed edges.
It doesn’t. It never has.
A woman approaches, a warm, practiced smile smoothing over her face. “Mr. Rhodes?”
Nodding once, I slide my hands into my jacket pockets.
“I’m Margaret. I oversee care planning here.” She gestures toward a small glass-walled office tucked just off the main sitting area. “Thank you for coming in.”
Inside, the office is neat, a little too staged. Plush chairs, a plate of untouched cookies on the side table. I don’t sit until she does, stretching my legs out and folding my arms across my chest like a shield.
Margaret pulls a manila file from the stack in front of her, smoothing it flat with careful fingers. “I know these meetings aren’t easy.”
I grunt in response. Meetings don’t scare me. It’s what they’re about that ties a fucking knot in my throat.
She clears hers softly. “Your father’s cognitive assessments show notable decline over the past few months. More confusion. Some sundowning behaviors. Increased wandering risk.”
I stare past her, at the framed photo on her desk. It’s a team of elderly residents playing cards, laughing. My mind is stuck on three specific words:
Wandering. Confusion. Risk.
None of this is new. But hearing it laid out like a quarterly loss report still cuts deep.
“We’re recommending a transition to the Memory Care unit,” Margaret says gently. “It’s a more secure environment, structured daily routines, higher staff-to-resident ratio. He’ll still have access to activities, therapy, everything he enjoys, just...with more support.”
Support. Right.
Another word for slowly losing the person you used to know.
Another word for watching a man who once ran multimillion-dollar acquisitions get lost between breakfast and lunch.
I drag a hand through my hair, letting the silence hang heavy between us.
“He talks to me about deals,” I say out of the blue. My voice sounds rough, like it’s fighting its way out. “Mergers. Hostile takeovers. It’s all bullshit now, but... I let him.”
Margaret’s smile softens. “That’s common. The strongest memories—the ones tied to identity—tend to hold on the longest.”
Identity.
My father isn’t the man who called every shot in the boardroom anymore. But it’s the only version of him left that feels remotely familiar.
Margaret flips another page. “I know it’s a lot to process, but Memory Care is really about quality of life. Preserving dignity. Giving him a space where he’s not overwhelmed or afraid.”
I nod, jaw tight.
I get it.
I fucking hate it.
But I get it.
She slides a form across the table—authorization paperwork. I pick up the pen and hover it over the line, heart hammering, the realization that I’m signing something bigger than just a transfer kicking in. I’m signing off on the last remnants of the man who raised me.
Or tried to.
When he wasn’t chasing deals. When he wasn’t drowning in ambition so loud it drowned everything else out.
Including me.
The pen scratches against the paper, sealing the decision neither of us ever wanted to make.
Margaret stands, smoothing her skirt. “Take your time. He’s in the garden if you want to see him. He’s been asking for you.”
I look up.
And for a second, I’m not the man I’ve built myself into.
I’m the kid standing at the door of his father’s office, waiting for permission to step inside.
“Yeah,” I rasp. “I’ll go find him.”
When I step back into the hallway, the scent of rain drifts in through the open door leading out to the garden. I need to remind myself that some things don’t stop just because I’m not ready. Like people getting older. Life moves on.
I follow the signs toward the garden, bracing for impact.
The rain starts up again as I make my way across the manicured path to the garden courtyard.
It’s soft at first, barely there, a whisper brushing over the hedges and benches.
Dad’s sitting under the awning, his wheelchair turned toward the little koi pond they have set up, even though most of the fish are probably hiding from the storm.
He’s got a navy sweater on over his button-down. The collar’s crooked. The sweater’s inside out.
Nobody noticed. Or he didn’t let them fix it.
Dad was never easy. But he was always him.
Today, he looks smaller. Shrunk inside the frame of the strong man I used to know. The man who commanded a boardroom with a glance. Who once taught me how to throw a curveball using a grapefruit and an empty laundry basket because “real baseballs are for kids with more trust funds than brains.”
He looks up when he hears me, and for a second—one tiny second—I see it.
Recognition.
“Nolan,” he says, voice rough like gravel, but there.
A punch to the gut and a miracle in the same breath.
“Hey, Dad,” I say, dropping into the chair beside him. The metal’s slick with rain, but I don’t care.
We sit there for a while, listening to the rain hit the awning. He watches it like it’s a ticker tape parade just for him.
“You make the deal?” he asks after a long moment, tapping two fingers against the armrest.
His tell. His old nervous tic from mergers.
I swallow the knot in my throat. Play along. Because it’s what I do.
“Yeah,” I say. “Closed it yesterday.”
He nods once, satisfied. “Knew you would. You’ve got the Rhodes blood. We don’t lose.”
I almost laugh. God, if only he knew how much losing I’ve done lately. How much walking away has started to feel more like surviving than losing.
“You taught me well,” I say instead.
He grunts, the way he used to when he didn’t want to admit he was proud.
“You keep the sharks off your ankles?”
“Most days,” I murmur.
Another long pause.
“You still got the lake house?” he asks suddenly, turning his head toward me.
The lake house. We sold it three years ago. But the memory is still burrowed deep, tied to the marrow of who we were.
The dock that creaked in the summer heat.
The tire swing.
Me, my uncle, my cousin, Dad, and my Grandfather all fishing off the end, pretending we didn’t care if we caught anything.
“Yeah,” I lie softly. “Still ours.”
He smiles, and it's so pure, so young, that I have to look away for a second.
We sit like that.
Side by side.
In the rain.
Between the truth and the lies we tell to hold onto the pieces of each other we can still salvage.
Eventually, he reaches out, groping blindly, and finds my hand. His grip is weaker than I remember. But it’s still him.
“You did good, kid.” He squeezes once before letting go.
And I’m ten years old again. Catching my first pop fly. Grinning like an idiot because Dad called me kid and meant it like a badge of honor.
I clear my throat, the lump nearly choking me.
“I’m proud of you, too,” I whisper.
He doesn't respond. Just closes his eyes, lets the rain sing the rest of the conversation between us.
I sit there, hands empty, heart breaking open, loving a man who’s already half-vanished into another life.
And hoping to God that somewhere deep down...he knows.
By the time the rain slows to a mist and the sky bruises into twilight, he’s half-asleep in his chair, and I know it’s time to go.
“I forgive you.” I press a kiss to the top of his head, a rare, clumsy thing I can’t remember the last time I gave him, and leave him there, dreaming whatever pieces of the past still feel safe.
The walk back to my car feels longer than it should, each step tugging at the part of me I tried to armor against him. Against this.
Forgiveness isn’t some clean, triumphant thing. It’s a choice you keep making, even when it still hurts.
Even when no one says the words.
Even when it comes too late.
Especially then.
The rain starts up again. I sit behind the wheel for a long time, the the drops tapping the windshield like a second heartbeat.
And when I finally pull out of the lot, I don’t look back.
Some things, some people, you carry forward, whether they can follow you or not.