CHAPTER 22

He brought her into the kitchen, leaving the papers littered across the den, and made her a cup of tea. He thought about putting a splash of whiskey in it to calm her, but he knew she would taste it and get even angrier. Sean was hard-pressed to know how to manage her—she’d never been one to tolerate managing. But then she’d never needed it before.

Her hand trembled slightly as she brought the teacup toward her mouth. “Stop examining me,” she murmured, and took a sip.

He turned his gaze down to his own mug. “I really wish you’d see a doctor.”

“If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.”

He let out a laugh despite himself. She had a comeback for everything, and yet she couldn’t do her damned bills. “Okay, I’m going to make suggestions and you’re going to shoot them down, but I can’t not make them.”

“Ever the responsible medical professional.”

He let out an exasperated sigh. “Have you always been this ­difficult?”

It was obviously a rhetorical question, but it stopped her for a moment, and she seemed to consider it. Finally she said, “No, I don’t believe so. I don’t like this . . . confusion. Some people seem to live their whole lives in a state of befuddlement. But it makes me irritable.” She glanced at him briefly. “More so than usual.”

Of course it did, especially since she’d had so little to hang on to in life other than her intelligence and grit. Sean dug a little deeper for patience. “It could be caused by an imbalance of some kind, in which case it’s reversible.”

“That’s what Simon hoped.”

“Dr. Krantz? Did he run any blood work?”

“He did. He died two weeks later. Lovely man.”

“Did he find anything?”

“Not a thing. It’s likely Alzheimer’s or some similarly ruinous cousin thereof. Certainly not Huntington’s. There’s no known case of onset at my age. But whatever it is, there’s no cure.”

“Auntie, there are new drugs now that can slow the process.”

“Sometimes they can, sometimes they can’t.”

“For the love of God, won’t you at least try?”

She put her teacup down and steadied her gaze at him for the first time that afternoon. There was a gentleness to it that bordered on sympathetic. Sean had no idea of what to expect.

“Did you have a plan?” she asked simply. “If the symptoms came?”

“A plan . . . you mean . . .” he stammered.

“Suicide. Were you planning to kill yourself? Or does your faith preclude that option?”

Catholic doctrine was pretty clear. Suicides are said to share no reunion with their loved ones in the afterlife, no communion with Jesus or the saints. They drift alone for eternity. But Sean could never buy the idea that a loving God would actually cut loose the most desperate of his children. He suddenly felt so weary. “Tierra del Fuego,” he said. “I was going to do it there.”

“Ah,” she nodded approvingly. “Parts unknown. Very fitting.”

“You?” he asked.

“When I was at risk for Huntington’s, I always thought I would have a nibble at some garden chemicals under the red maple.”

“Also fitting.”

“Yes, but then all of you children came here to live, and I couldn’t very well let you find me foaming at the mouth in the backyard. I never did devise a satisfactory alternative. But as the years passed, it became less and less likely I’d need one.”

Until now. Neither of them said it, but Sean knew she was thinking it, too. They sat quietly as the drone of the lawn mower rounded to the front of the house. It seemed terribly unfair—how much was one family supposed to handle? And yet he’d seen families decimated by disease and violence, mothers watching their children die from something as preventable as dysentery, children orphaned with no relatives left to care for them. He reminded himself that at least his family had a roof over their heads and food to eat, warm beds and clean water.

And one hell of a godawful gene pool . . .

Aunt Vivvy did something completely unexpected then. She reached out and covered Sean’s hand with her own, the grip of her gnarled fingers surprisingly strong. And he felt sure he knew the reason she was taking his hand for the first time in their entire history together.

“Please don’t ask me to kill you,” he said.

She sighed. “You’re certain?”

“Yeah, I’d really rather not.”

“You may change your mind when things get worse.”

“I know. Still.”

“Let’s consider it an open invitation, then. You’ll do as you see fit, with my blessing.”

Her blessing. Another first. Had she ever given such glowing approval of any of his past efforts? Apparently in her book, of all his good deeds, murder would be the high point.

She released his hand to bring the teacup to her lips again, but the feel of her tight grasp lingered. Would he change his mind eventually, when she became so lost, so hard to handle, that her death would seem like a gift to them both? He’d seen dementia before, but not very often. In the places he’d stayed, most people didn’t get the chance to outlive the functionality of their brains. How bad would it get? And how could he possibly find someone willing to care for an increasingly demented old lady and her slightly odd, orphaned great nephew?

“Sean,” she said, interrupting his ruminations. “Is it possible that your father was in the yard today fixing the lawn mower?”

“No, Auntie,” he said, startled that her delusion so closely shadowed his thoughts earlier in the day. “It was Mr. McGrath, Cormac’s father.”

“Brigid McGrath’s husband?”

“Yeah, from the Garden Club.”

“Hmm,” she said. “I might have sworn it was Martin.”

* * *

Sean waited for Deirdre to get home. He desperately hoped that they could come up with some sort of plan. More than anything he just needed to talk to someone.

When she didn’t show up after her shift at the diner, he called her cell phone. She was in her car, headed to Worcester. He could hear the rumble of rush hour traffic on the Mass Pike.

“I’m going straight to practice,” she said, sounding slightly annoyed at his intrusion. “What’s the issue?”

“Jesus, pretty much freaking everything, Dee.”

“Okay, well, I’ve got a show going up in two short weeks, and it’s a part I got ten days ago, Sean, so I can’t really deal with pretty much freaking everything at the moment. In fact, I can’t deal with anything other than this performance, aka the basis for my entire future.”

“So I’m just supposed to handle all this shit myself.”

“Welcome to my world,” she said. She honked her horn and muttered, “Asshole!” before hanging up. Sean assumed she was referring to another driver, but he wondered if she’d meant for him to have a small share in the epithet, too.