The drive to Winchester took roughly two hours. Because Alyssa wasn’t ready to negotiate winding hills, Sarah took the wheel. They cranked up the music, sang along with Tom Petty, and for the first time in weeks the strain seemed to ease. Alyssa confessed a minor crush on a boy on the high school soccer team, and this gave Sarah pause. She recalled, when she was not much older, having a crush herself on a certain star lacrosse player.
The entrance road to Autumn Living was soothing by design. Even now, on high winter, the brown lawn and dormant shrubs presented a neatly trimmed appearance, ready to be reborn in spring. A more jaded eye than Sarah’s might have viewed it as contrived, a symbol of the cycle of life’s continuance, playing out subliminally, at a place whose mission was inescapably more finite.
Walter Ridgeway had suffered a stroke three weeks after Bryce was elected to Congress. That the cerebral event had ruined his body was a given—the seventy-six-year-old scion, who days earlier had been playing tennis and hiking, and who was a longtime fixture in D.C. power circles, was forced into a wheelchair.
Even more devastating were the effects on his mind.
In the first month there had been hope, his primary care doctor assuring everyone that, given the best therapies and tended to by the right caregivers, recovery at home might be possible. There were tests and specialists, yet each successive result only hardened the damning truth. The Walter Ridgeway of Washington D.C., a fierce Russia hawk who for a generation had set the course of Eastern European diplomacy, would never be the same.
In the weeks after Bryce’s swearing in, his father’s mental state deteriorated. He became forgetful, combative, and a string of battle-weary home health nurses quit after only days on the job. On three occasions, Sarah had been forced to fill the gap until a replacement could be found, awkward nights spent in Walter’s sprawling Shenandoah Valley mansion handling an increasingly obstinate father-in-law who was more a stranger every day.
After three months, the doctor recommended placing Walter in a memory care facility. Sarah and Bryce had weighed taking him into their home, but Walter’s doctor dissuaded them. He said Bryce’s father was failing rapidly, and that full-time professional care would soon be a necessity. Autumn Living seemed the best of the bad choices.
“It’s never the same people,” Alyssa said quietly as they signed in at the front desk.
Sarah looked around and could only agree. She saw only one familiar face—the facility’s director was on the phone in her office. “I guess there’s a lot of turnover at a place like this. I’m sure Lucy will be here.”
Lucy was a nurse’s assistant who seemed omnipresent. She was petite and cheerful, with adorable nose-freckles, and seemed impervious to Walter’s capricious moods.
They were buzzed through a locked door into the living area. The halls were still decorated for Christmas, cheap paper snowmen and Santas dangling by fishing line from the ceiling lattice. Sarah spotted Lucy almost immediately, and she came over with her ever-present smile. “He’s in the sunroom,” she said, after exchanging New Years greetings.
Lucy led the way.
“How’s be been?” Sarah asked.
“Oh, the same. There are some great pictures from Christmas on the website.”
“Sorry we didn’t make it,” Alyssa said. “Dad was really busy.”
“So I gather,” Lucy said.
The comment put Sarah off, even if it made sense—the chaos of Bryce’s schedule would be evident to everyone in America. Even so, Autumn Living had always felt like a kind of refuge. A place where the distractions of D.C. could be left behind to focus on family.
They cornered into the sunroom and Walter was there, sitting by a window with a Tartan blanket in his lap. He stared out the window blankly. His gray hair looked mussed and was getting a bit long.
Alyssa rushed up and put an arm around his shoulder, gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Hi, Grandad!” She leaned into his field of view and Walter stared at her. His expression never changed, Alyssa getting the same blank stare as the window.
“Hello, Walter!” Sarah said cheerily.
His eyes went back outside. Someone had put a string of plastic beads around his neck, a silvery Happy New Year! charm at the front.
Alyssa began talking, an endearing one-way narrative of school and soccer and girlfriend mischief.
Sarah took a few steps back. Alyssa was Walter’s only grandchild, and he’d been smitten since day one. It was a rare event these days, but Alyssa did make the occasional connection, evoking traces of familiarity in his typically rheumy gaze. Alyssa had always touched Walter like no one else, Bryce included.
Lucy leaned in and said in a soft voice, “He’s been eating really well, keeping a good schedule. Always in bed by eight.”
Like the other residents, Walter had a private room decorated with a handful of furnishings from his twelve-thousand square foot mansion—a downsizing of monumental proportions. The walls were decorated with family photos, and a few shelves held keepsakes from his days with the State Department. The hope, ostensibly, was that some of it might cue memories. Sarah hadn’t seen any sign of it in nearly a year.
“What does he do when he’s in his room? Watch TV?”
“No, not any more. That’s pretty common—they can’t keep track of what’s going on, so they lose interest. Same with books and newspapers. He gets up on his walker now and again, moves around the room chattering.”
“Chattering?”
“Yeah, I’ve heard it through the door a few times when I pass his room, and the night staff have mentioned it. They say he stays up late, shuffling around and talking to himself.”
“Is that common?”
“It is. You hear conversations with spouses and friends, even parents who’ve been gone for years.”
“Walter would talk to his wife, I think. Or maybe Bryce.”
“Could be. All in all, he seems comfortable.”
A nurse came into the room, buttonholed Sarah, and they went over Walter’s meds—a monthly requirement at the facility. For a man of his age and condition, Walter was on surprisingly few.
They stayed for another hour.
When they left Walter was staring out the window again, the same glazed look as when they’d arrived. Yet if he seemed unmoved by their visit, it had a buoyant effect on Alyssa. This, in turn, raised Sarah’s spirits.
The ride home brought more music and some blissfully off-key singing. They stopped for a Frappuccino halfway home. By the time they reached the house, however, the sugar had worn off. Alyssa’s mood sank precipitously.
Sarah bit the bullet as they pulled into the driveway. “What’s wrong, Baby?”
“I don’t know … I guess I still don’t get it. Why Dad didn’t want to go see Grandpa over Christmas.”
“Honey, he’s under a lot of pressure. People are calling him at all hours, he’s traveling constantly. Give him a pass. Grandpa is doing well, and your father promised to go see him soon.”
A frown like a sad emoji: hollow eyes and a mouth like an upside-down U. Without another word, Alyssa got out and disappeared into the house.
Sarah didn’t move, her hands rigid on the wheel. A getaway driver outside a bank. The truth was, she couldn’t shake the same thought. Why hadn’t Bryce gone? Even if his father didn’t realize what was happening, you did it for Alyssa. Did it for the family. Because that was the right thing to do.
And Bryce always does the right thing.
Every marriage has its sixth sense, and right then Sarah’s was going off like a klaxon. She supposed it was the reason the text had hit a nerve. She’d tried desperately to discard the notion that Bryce had been unfaithful, yet something was wrong between them. Small gestures gone missing, a lack of touching when they were together. Glances that seemed out of synch, guarded phone conversations. Any one disconnect, alone, would be nothing more than an outlier. Taken together, however, it seemed a harbinger of … what?
Sarah pushed the question away and went inside.