Chapter Nine
Willow hurried away from the restaurant to the shore path, automatically picking up Geralt’s discarded bottle from the grass and shoving it into her pack with her organ shoes and Bach scores.
She scanned the path and the seashore along the way, praying she would not see the golf cart on its side in a ditch or a set of tracks veering off into the ocean.
She rounded the bend and turned onto the Cameron House front walk, past the pair of stone lions that had stood guard there as long as she could remember.
She was first relieved to see Geralt’s cart parked—in a loose definition of the term—beside the front steps. But her heart lurched when she realized he was still seated, unmoving, in the front seat of the cart.
“Mr. Talbot?” she called anxiously, breaking into a run. “Mr. Talbot, please, are you all right?”
After an agonizing moment, his head turned; her heart sighed with relief at the sight of his sharp profile and hawklike nose silhouetted in the late-afternoon light.
“For God’s sake, Sue’s girl, don’t tell me you’ve bought into the ‘poor, aging, decrepit old man at death’s door’ garbage my wife is pushing. I’m fine.”
Regaining her calm, at least outwardly, Willow raised an eyebrow. “Your parking job would suggest otherwise.”
He scowled. “It’ll be my lawn soon enough; I’ll drive all over it if I want to.” His gaze narrowed. “Are you here because my wife and her slow-moving assistant suckered you into it, or did you come for the tour I promised?”
Willow regarded him carefully. His eyes were as sharp as ever, but the knuckles clutching the steering wheel were white, and his breathing seemed fast and labored.
She replied, “I’m here for the tour, of course.
If you’re up for it.” At the very least, she thought, maybe she could get him out of the cart and into the house.
He nodded. “You’re lying, but I’ll let it pass.
” He carefully released his fingers from the wheel, climbed out of the cart, and walked with as much steadiness as he could muster to the deeply sunken post at the base of the stairs, from which two weathered wooden signs hung, one above the other.
The first, in an old-fashioned flowery font, proclaimed the house to be:
The Cameron Seaside Cottage Historical Site
Beneath the sign was another, smaller:
Home of the North Islands Historical Society
Geralt glared back at Willow. “If you’re satisfied that I am not at death’s door, perhaps you would help an old man up the stairs?”
Without comment, Willow walked up beside him and offered her arm, which he grudgingly took, and the two stepped into Cameron House.
Geralt hated that the short walk into the entry hall had exhausted him this much, hated the indignity of getting old.
Mustering what remained of his strength and composure, he made his way to one of the high-backed foyer chairs and sat.
Sunlight from the stained glass scattered fragments of color all around, illuminating his translucent pallor and refracting jittery shards of light from the glass knob of the cane in his trembling hand.
He looked up, irritated, at the solemn young woman watching him.
“I presume my wife and her boring little assistant will be waiting for your update that I’m not dead.
Satisfied?” he rasped; as hard as he tried to summon his usual curmudgeonly sharpness, his voice came out sounding petulant and weak. And elderly. And sick.
He refused to be elderly. And curse it all, he was not sick.
Willow managed a smile that did not quite hide her worry. He hated the worry too; it told him he did indeed look as bad as he felt, and he felt horrible.
“They were worried, that’s all. And they knew you didn’t want them coming after you, so I volunteered.”
“I’m eighty-three years old; I’m not going to run to the doctor every time I have some little twinge.”
“You know what people who live to eighty-five and ninety have in common?” she retorted. “When something’s wrong at eighty-three, they go to the doctor. And they get to live longer.”
“The young woman makes a sound case, you know,” came a mild voice from the top of the stairs.
Willow looked up in surprise at the slim man with his dark suit and neat silvery beard. “It’s you,” she said awkwardly. “You were in the church, at Aunt Sue’s memorial.”
Geralt started. He had not expected this. He shot a piercing look at Willow. “You saw him at the church today?” he asked, trying to still the tremors in his hands and legs and failing.
Willow nodded. “He sat in the choir loft. For a little while.”
The man said, with a hint of reluctance, “I arrived late and stayed upstairs so as not to draw attention.” He descended the stairs and turned to Willow.
“Apparently, I was unsuccessful. My name is Joel Drummond; I managed Miss Effie’s and Dr. Davis’s affairs while they lived, and of course, I worked with them on historical society matters.
” He paused. “Please accept my condolences for your loss. You are Miss Stone, Susan’s … niece, are you not?” he said.
Willow managed a small smile. “Honorary niece only. Sue was my godmother.”
Joel nodded, a speculative look in his eye. “I see. She mentioned you might be coming to the island soon.”
At that moment, Geralt burst into a paroxysm of coughing, and then retching, as he clutched his stomach, face contorting in a rictus of tension and pain.
Joel hurried over to him, feeling for Geralt’s thready pulse. “Miss Stone, do you have a telephone?”
Geralt was dimly aware of the voices around him. They were trying to manage him again. Everyone was always trying to manage him.
“The battery died. I was on my way home to charge it. Does the house have a landline?”
“We had it shut off after Miss Effie died; Dr. Davis used her cell phone.” Joel turned to Geralt and spoke directly into his face, trying to make the old man understand him.
“You are not well, sir. We will help you into the sitting room to lie down, and Miss Stone will go seek medical assistance. And you will let us.”
“For God’s sake, I’m right here. No need to shout.
” Jesus, his head hurt. No one had told him high blood pressure would make his head hurt like this.
It probably wasn’t even his blood pressure—he was dehydrated, that was it.
When did he last have water? In a thick, blurry voice, he said, “I’m thirsty.
I’m supposed to drink lots of water…” He vaguely realized his hand was jerking uncontrollably, and then his whole arm.
His cane fell to the floor, the glass knob shattering and throwing sharp fragments around the room.
“Dammit,” he slurred. “I liked that cane.”
He was dimly aware of words between Willow and Joel, but he couldn’t make them make sense, and everything was unraveling.
His head throbbed. He couldn’t catch his breath.
His heart pounded in his chest, thick and uneven.
Then he was being lifted between the two of them; he had a few seconds of clarity, able to keep his feet moving under his body as they carefully maneuvered him across the hall.
He stopped in the archway, gazing at the wooden rocking chair in the window, sea-blue afghan draped over the back.
He remembered his Aunt Effie crocheting that afghan, and he remembered how she used to bake snickerdoodle cookies.
The sweet-warm fragrance of cinnamon and fresh butter wafted into his senses as though she were baking them now, as the chair moved slowly back and forth, back and forth.
How could he have forgotten the cookies?
Aunt Effie, from her seat in the rocker, turned her face and smiled at him gently—at the little boy he had been, as though it were his childhood self who stood before her and not the grouchy old sinner he had become.
He blinked, and she was gone.
At least it had been her and not the other one.
Willow’s voice. “Please, Mr. Talbot, it’s only a little farther; let’s get you safely lying down, and then I’ll go for help. You need a doctor, you know you do—”
“I’m fine!” he roared, summoning the last of his will and strength to find and assemble, if for the last time, the fiery exterior he was committed to showing the world.
“Leave me alone! When it’s my time, it’s my time.
No need to make a fuss over me. Leave me be.
Leave me—” He gasped and slid to the floor, Willow and Joel helping to ease him down to a seated position without hurting himself.
Geralt’s breath was shallow and fast, his arms and legs shaking uncontrollably now.
In a sudden spasm, he groaned and doubled over, curling up in the fetal position and retching.
Then he vomited, convulsively expelling most of the food and lemonade he had consumed throughout the afternoon in a flood of foulness.
He realized he was very possibly going to die. If not today, then soon.
Geralt Talbot had never seriously considered the idea of dying before. He did not much like it.