Chapter Nine
After an hour of “preparing”—which really means double-checking everything in my hidey-hole is as it should be, which, of course, it is—I head outside.
The moon has made an appearance through the dark, jagged branches.
Humidity still leaves the air damp and heavy, my skin sticky.
I slide into the van and back out of the driveway.
My headlights slash through the dark night, catching the eyes of an animal scurrying across the road.
My grandmother lives on the other side of the San Antonio Zoo, in a building advertised as senior living at its finest. And perhaps it is fine senior living for people who remember who they are.
But for Grandma Betty—a.k.a. Gran—it involves a high-security, double-locked, cameras-watching-the-doors, code-required-for-entry-and-exit unit of an assisted living facility.
If you were to pick up a pamphlet, you’d see white-haired couples strolling the River Walk, a smiling caregiver nearby.
But the last time they let Gran out, she made a break for it.
Can’t say I blame her.
My parents are on a monthlong cruise, which means I’m trying to be better about visiting her, both because I do love my grandmother and to assuage the guilt my mother felt for leaving her in a home while she and Dad toured the Mediterranean.
No matter how much we tell Mom to enjoy her retirement, she has made up her mind to be hard at work at something—whether it’s taking over vacation planning, visiting Gran twice a week, or redoing their kitchen for the third time in a decade.
Dad, meanwhile, has embraced it wholeheartedly, taking up the generic pastimes of golf and crossword puzzles.
The parking lot is vacant this time of night, a wide swath of empty concrete painted with lines.
There are no official visiting hours because to have them would suggest to the residents that they are not in their own home, not in a place where they have control.
And, at least for Gran, that is true. But still, the illusion of being able to see guests at all hours is nice—if only for family members armed with a code.
It also means I can slip away when the girls are asleep, when Brian is otherwise occupied.
I climb from the van, lock it, stop a few steps from the facility’s front door, and just stare.
It’s been a month since I last came to check in.
Not because I don’t want to visit Gran—more that I don’t feel like I ever actually get to see her when I come here.
The Gran I knew is gone, lost to Alzheimer’s that’s gotten progressively worse with each passing year.
On rare occasions, we get a glimpse. The nurse in charge calls when she is lucid, and when I can, I hightail it in to spend a few precious moments with the woman I grew up worshipping, the same woman who also saved my life.
But tonight, I want to see her. Even if it’s just the shell of her, a false assurance of safety, of understanding.
I type in the code for entry, eye the camera, wonder if it’s really turned on or just for show.
In the foyer, a secretary ignores me, and I walk past her down a long hall painted in bright colors as though they were attempting (and failing) to make the place cheerful.
My mother hates that Gran lives here. The problem is, we can’t watch her 24/7, and Gran is a sly one.
After she disappeared for the third time—I have things to do, places to be!
she’d declare when we, or rather the police, tracked her down—Mom made the decision to move her out of her home and into a living facility.
So far, she’s only escaped once.
“Nadia.” A creaky voice startles me, and I turn on my heel to find Gran peeking out of the facility’s kitchen—a giant industrial one with lots of stainless steel through a door that proclaims Employees Only.
There’s a digital keypad for entry, but somehow—and unsurprisingly—Gran has made her way inside.
It’s the sort of thing that makes me wonder about her.
“Gran, what are you doing?” Excitement over the fact she recognizes me wars with concern for where she’s snuck into, and I eye a rack of knives on the wall beyond her. They’re professional grade and recently sharpened from the way their edges gleam—the sort you could easily slit a throat with.
“You didn’t bring the girls?” She searches behind me.
“Sorry, Gran, it’s late.” Still, guilt stabs into me. She loves seeing Eliza and Evie.
“Okay, well, come here, hurry.” She waves a hand excitedly, and though I want to tell her she’s breaking the rules, it’s not often she recognizes me—not often she’s doing much of anything, especially something that has her grinning like a fool.
Heaving a sigh, I follow after her, glancing behind me like I’m on a job and about to get caught instead of visiting my grandmother in a care facility.
I can imagine it now—calling Brian to come bail me out for trespassing or aiding and abetting or whatever they’d charge me with.
“Look what I found!”
Gran holds up a slice of chocolate cake—half of which she’s already eaten, judging by the frosting coating her lips.
“Oh, Gran.” I begrudgingly accept the piece she slides onto a plate and pushes my way. “Are you supposed to be eating this?”
“Nope!” she declares, taking another bite.
I nibble on one forkful—it’s the cheap grocery store stuff, but chocolate is chocolate, especially in this place.
“How’s the job?” Gran asks with a giant wink.
She rarely asks about work anymore. In fact, it’s a topic I avoid.
Once upon a time, she was my go-to, the only person who knew what I was really doing.
But now her memory is here one moment, gone the next; sometimes she starts talking like it’s twenty years ago, or fifty.
In other words, her lucidity is highly unpredictable, and sometimes she thinks her caregivers—the nurses and CNAs around her—are her family.
She’s mistaken an aide for my brother, Graham, because they are both tall with dark hair.
She’s called a young woman who doles out meds by my mother’s name nearly every day.
I have to be careful. Worst-case scenario, she thinks some doctor is me and asks how the murdering is going.
Maybe the doctor would roll their eyes. Or maybe it would be the thing that tipped them off, that made them wonder…Or maybe I’m being paranoid. Either way, I’ve stopped sharing things about work with her whenever it can be helped.
“Work is…good.” I chew the cake, use my thumb to wipe off a smear of chocolate.
“You remind me of myself, you know.”
I look up. “I do?”
Gran licks her fork clean, grins, and springs into action, stabbing at the air viciously, like she’s a ninja, or maybe Michael Myers. “Got that same spunk.” She chuckles and goes back to her cake as though she didn’t just mime killing someone.
It takes me a moment to process, to mutter, “Um, thanks,” and wonder, once again, if we’re not so different.
If she, too, has killed people.
If maybe she liked it.