Chapter Nineteen #3
Lori falls asleep against Mitch’s shoulder, exhausted and cried out.
“I hate to say this, Mitch, but I have to talk to Lyle about today. If that had happened on the river…”
“I’m sorry,” Mitch sighs. “Truly. We wanted to keep doing the thing we love as long as we could. I thought it might be the last time. Guess it is. Guess it was ,” she corrects herself sadly. “I wouldn’t blame you for asking us to leave.”
I put my hand on her arm, giving it a gentle squeeze. “We’ll need to figure out whether Lori will be safe on the capstone trip. But as long as her health checks out, you’re welcome at camp tonight.”
“I’d like that. She would, too. You know,” Mitch says softly, glancing at the driver’s earbuds, “I never would have taken up canoeing if it wasn’t for Lori.
Maybe you’ve noticed there aren’t a lot of Black faces in the wilderness.
But if you love your wife, you grow to love the things that make her who she is. Have you ever been married, Stellar?”
“No. I almost got engaged once. Before Lyle,” I amend hastily, hoping she didn’t notice my slip.
“But we didn’t have time for each other’s hobbies.
” I hardly had my own hobbies, those two years with Jen.
My extracurricular activities were the hours upon hours of unpaid work for the department—research, teaching, administration.
Medicine was the beginning and end of many of my colleagues’ lives. My life, too.
“Lucky you found McHuge, then,” Mitch says.
“And lucky I found Lori. She’s so smart, my Lori.
Did you know she was a film studies professor?
She could recite every line from the movies she taught.
Then she’d mix up a word here and there.
Neither of us thought too much of it until one morning she decided to bake bread, then forgot it in the oven and damn near burned down our house.
” Mitch looks at her with a tenderness that might stop my heart, it’s so full of love and loss.
She heaves a long sigh. “Life is strange. I thought she’d be the one taking care of me, with my diabetes.
But it’s the other way around. Earning money, taking care of the house, memory keeper—it’s all my job now.
Lori and I have to find value in our choice to love and care for each other, to honor the love we have, and cherish the memory of the love that used to be.
” Mitch wipes her tears with her sleeve.
I have to press my fingers underneath my own eyes to stay dry. “You two are beautiful together, Mitch.”
She shakes her head. “I’m not looking for validation.
I’m secure in my choices. What I’m saying is life isn’t fair.
I see you watching people. I see you counting what they give you, so you know what to give back.
I’m telling you time will steal that from you the way it did for me and Lori.
And I don’t mean you’re selfish,” she says, holding up a hand, “but it’s obvious how much that man wants to give you that you won’t take from him because you think it’s going to cost too much.
And I won’t even mention your… sister? Cousin?
Whatever Sloane is that you two are keeping secret. ”
My breath seizes in my chest. Mitch, always watching; me, never dreaming what truths she saw. “I can explain,” I croak desperately.
“You don’t have to explain anything,” she says bluntly, resettling Lori against her shoulder.
“You rescued my wife. Cared for her when I wasn’t there.
So I owe you one. And we didn’t tell you about her memory, so I owe you two.
Your secrets are your business, as far as I’m concerned.
But if I put it together, Lori might, too.
And she’s never been the type who can keep a secret.
So while you’re discussing things with McHuge, you might think about discussing that. ”
“Yeah. That’s fair. Thanks, Mitch.” My stomach burns the way it used to when coffee was my midnight breakfast. It’s not that I wish Mitch didn’t know anything—I wish she knew everything .
I wish I could tell everyone at the Love Boat what was going on and be done with the deception and the worry.
I’m not built for this life. Even my dad knew I was more of a liability than an asset on a con, or he’d never have let me go.
We pull up at the wide double doors of the emergency department. I make sure Lori gets a wheelchair and gratefully retreat when Mitch says she’d prefer to manage the visit on her own.
I walk to a nearby café, spend six bucks on a large Earl Grey, and settle in to worry about how many of my mistakes are coming home to roost.
Lori’s official discharge diagnosis is early dementia, temporarily aggravated by a change in her environment.
We designed the worst possible activity for her, as it turns out. Unfamiliar forest, strange activity, new partner. She had nothing to ground herself with.
On the rideshare back to camp, we pass the geocaching festival again. A yellow-and-teal van pulls from the parking lot onto the highway, cutting us off.
From the front passenger seat, Alan Fisher turns his head in our direction, his flat expression asserting his inviolable right to rule the road. I don’t think he’d recognize me, but I pull my cap down over my face anyway.
We were just here. That’s the third time he’s been where we were on the same day.
Looks like I have another thing to discuss with Lyle tonight.