Chapter 31 Lindy
Lindy
“Are you okay?” Lindy asked Hailey quickly. Greta was moving toward the steps, though Hailey was blocking them. “Is Noah?”
“I couldn’t catch him in time.”
“He left?” Oh God, Lindy thought, there’s not going to be a wedding, is there?
But Hailey’s eyes had fixed on Greta. “Grandma, I’m worried about you. You need help! You need to tell Mom.”
“Let me by,” Greta said.
“Tell me what?” Lindy didn’t know why Hailey would be confronting her mother with anything other than having pulled a gun
on Noah. Lindy could hardly comprehend it, much less that Greta had “always” kept a gun up here where Lindy’s sons slept.
Hailey folded her arms. “Grandma. Tell Mom about Grandpa.”
“What do you mean?” Lindy shot a nervous glance toward her mother, who was still clutching her throat, pale.
“I don’t like being up here,” Greta said.
“Grandma,” Hailey said. “You can’t keep all this to yourself anymore.”
In Lindy’s mind, the idea that something might be the matter with her father simply did not compute, but her mother was clearly getting more agitated, her eyes darting toward the stairs.
“All right, let’s go downstairs,” Lindy said.
“Hailey, Grandma can tell me whatever it is down there. Okay?” Still not believing there could be anything to tell, she looked to her mother, who swallowed—oh, God, there was something—but nodded slightly in agreement.
Hailey gave a nod in return, its sternness a contrast to the concern in her eyes, then wheeled to hustle down the stairs.
Lindy gestured for her mother to go ahead, then followed, feeling anxious, protective, confused, as Greta carefully descended,
clutching the rail.
“We found out in March,” Lindy’s mother said, eyes watering, as she stood across from where Lindy sat at the kitchen counter.
Hailey stood nearby, arms folded, feet planted, as if in an effort to keep herself still. “We . . . we decided we would wait
to tell you, because we didn’t want to ruin your summer plans. I know it sounds . . . foolish now.”
Lindy’s throat was swelling; she blinked back tears. She would not have imagined that any news could shock her, given everything.
And yet.
The distress on Hailey’s face confirmed what Greta was saying. “Grandpa mistook Noah for one of his old students just now,”
she said quietly. “That’s how I found out.”
“Oh,” Lindy said finally. “God.” She glanced out toward the deck, where her father was sitting calmly in one of the Adirondack
chairs, watching the fog creep closer.
Her father had been diagnosed with dementia.
Her father was “deteriorating rapidly.”
Her father, the night before last, had failed to recognize her mother.
“This is why you wanted to cancel the party,” Lindy said absently, though it immediately seemed like a stupid thing to say, and she thought of all the times, these last couple weeks, when she’d tried to talk to her dad and he hadn’t answered or had seemed distracted.
(She’d thought he was working on a book!
Was that just a lie her mother had told?) She thought how miffed she’d been with him for not being more helpful about David.
How blind and clueless and self-involved she’d been!
Not to notice! That maybe he didn’t even know her?
“I’m sorry,” Greta said. “We thought we had time. Your father and I thought we would have a lot more time. We thought he’d
be fine for the party . . .”
“You should’ve told me!” Lindy hated how she felt like, sounded like, a child, and she tried to straighten. “We need to make
a plan. It doesn’t matter about the party. I’ll call everybody and cancel.” Everything, everything, was falling apart. She
heard David: Sometimes you just push too hard, Lin.
But she couldn’t stop. She started asking her mother questions.
When did the symptoms start? Last fall. What doctors had they seen?
Five top specialists in New York. What exactly was the prognosis?
Unpredictable decline. And it had been rapid so far.
(And the book? “He believes he is working on one!” Greta said, in an odd, optimistic tone. “It keeps him calm.”)
Lindy took a deep breath. Somehow, she was fuming at David: How dare he leave her to deal with this all on her own while he
went off to start a new family with that little girl, Tiffany? Her parents had always been nice to him! At least, her father
had! “Okay, we need to plan for the future,” she announced. “Dad needs to get the very best care, twenty-four seven.”
“Lindy, honey.” Greta appeared about to say something more, then took a step back. She went to fill the tea kettle. She seemed
to want to change the subject. As if any other subject existed. “You have enough on your mind right now. Even if we do cancel
the party. There’s still the wedding . . .” At that, she looked slightly guilty.
Hailey gave a little, unamused laugh.
“Mom,” Lindy said sternly, “stop it with the tea. Let’s set the question of the wedding aside for a moment. I’m sorry, Hailey.”
Hailey nodded once, twisting her ring around her finger, and Lindy turned back to Greta. “We need to talk about how we’re
going to take care of Dad.”
Greta shut off the water, placed the kettle gently back on the stove, and turned to face Lindy. “I’m going to take care of your father.”
Lindy quickly shook her head. “You’re not going to be able to do it all on your own, Mom. You have to let us help you. We’ll
figure it out. You can move in with us! We’ve got plenty of room. We can travel to see his New York doctors. It’s not too
far!”
Greta stood blinking for a moment, while Lindy’s gut swirled. “Your father loves you so much,” Greta said. “All we’ve ever
wanted was to protect you. It’s all we still want now.”
The sense that more terrible news was imminent sank through Lindy’s skin. “Mom?”
Greta took a deep breath. “That’s why what I’ve decided—what we’ve decided—is this.”
Lindy heard her mother’s words but couldn’t make sense of them, not at first.
Florida?
A “memory-care” facility?
Sell Innisfree?
“Grandma, you can’t sell Innisfree,” Hailey said, aghast.
Right now, to Lindy, that seemed like the least of it. Her heart hurt like it’d had an electric shock. “Mom, you can’t. Take
him to Florida? I’ll never—I’ll never get to see him—I won’t be able to help—”
“Believe me,” Greta said, “I wish there was some other way.”
“But we haven’t even talked about this. You didn’t even tell me.”
“Grandma, there’s got to be some other way,” Hailey said, and Lindy hated to see her daughter standing there like she’d just been physically slapped,
but she was feeling the same way.
“I understand you’re upset,” Greta said. “But please believe me when I tell you—”
Lindy couldn’t withstand one more revelation, not right now. She got up and stumbled outside to where her father sat in the
cooling evening. The fog, which had almost reached the deck of Innisfree now, and the rolling sound of the invisible ocean,
all seemed part of some dream she wished she could wake up from.
She knelt beside the arm of the Adirondack chair, and when her dad looked down to meet her eyes, she could tell that, right now, he knew her. Thank God, today, right now, he knew her.
“Dad?” she said, and when he acknowledged her with a tiny smile, she threw her arms around his neck. He smelled of the same
aftershave he’d always worn. Her mother had said that she had to shave him sometimes now and it wasn’t easy to do. Lindy felt
waves of sorrow overtaking her as she pressed her face to his crisp shirt, and she wished she could cry, that he would comfort
her the way he always used to. But she understood now that they were past that, things were different now, so she stayed quiet,
hoping he understood, too, that she would be the one taking care of him from now on, and she was sorry she was late getting
about it.
“I guess your mother told you,” he said, his voice rumbling through her as he gently patted her back. “I wish she hadn’t.
I wish she’d given you at least one more day.”