The park bench by the artificial pond looked like a movie prop, set at an artful slant beneath a Rockwellian maple tree. In the pond a family of plump ducks paddled by, ignoring the embarrassment of bread crumbs on the shore.
The man sitting on the bench was clean-shaven, save for a patch of hoary stubble at the point of his jaw. His once-rugged face had crumbled under gravity, giving him jowls. His eyes were a touch milky, his still-brawny forearms liver-spotted.
Jogging at a pace just shy of a sprint, Naomi Templeton spotted the bench from a good distance out and decided to accelerate until she passed it. Racer-back tank top over a jog bra, black running tights, sports headphones blaring Alicia Keys—all designed to make her run faster, go harder, be better. This girl is on fire.
She crossed the finish line of the bench and leaned over, hands on knees, taking a few minutes to recover. Then she circled the bench, sat on the end opposite the old man, and flipped out her earbuds.
As she caught her breath, the old man looked over at her, gave a double take. “You remind me of my daughter.”
She said, “Is that so?”
“Yeah, she’s sturdy like you. And don’t go getting offended. I mean well built, not fat.”
“Noted.”
“Her brothers are fit, too. Athletes both of them. Lacrosse. You shoulda seen their muscles when they came home from college. Put me to shame—me in my prime, I mean. I think she was always trying to keep up.”
Naomi leaned forward. Breeze blew across her bare shoulders, turning her drying sweat pleasingly cool. “Girls’ll do that.”
“Yeah, especially with her mother gone early.” His trembling fingers found the cross nestled in the gray chest hair visible below the notch of his throat. His shirt was buttoned wrong, misaligned. He shivered a little. “She’s a tough one, my daughter. Always tried to please me, I think.”
Naomi stared at the water. “Girls’ll do that, too.”
“She never learned that you can’t ever please anyone by trying to please them.”
“That’s a tough lesson to learn, I guess.”
For a moment they sat and watched the breeze ripple the pond’s surface. It was faux idyllic here, which made it easy to disregard the countless TVs blaring too loud from countless windows in the industrial block of a building set behind the strip of artificial turf, the wheelchair platform lift waiting at the base of the stairs, the direct-care specialists—all lovely, all patient, all ethnic—heading back from their breaks along the gently sloped walkways. All you had to do was squint a little, breathe the fresh air, and you could pretend you were in the real world, that everything was okay.
The old man shivered again.
Naomi said, “What do you say we get you inside, Dad?”
* * *
She stood at the nurses’ station in the assisted-living facility, looking over the latest medical report. The facility’s name, Sunrise Villa, always struck her as optimistic and perversely cruel. Assessing her father’s lab work, she felt a not-unfamiliar coldness wash through her gut.
She sensed Amanaki’s eyes lift from behind the counter. The nurse, with her empathic gaze and lilting Tongan accent, seemed preternaturally aware of subtle emotional shifts, a human tuning fork. “Everything okay, honey?”
“Yeah, thanks. It’s just … The labs … I have to call my brother.”
Amanaki’s eyes took on a knowing gleam, and she busied herself again at the computer.
Naomi stepped away from the desk and dialed. Jason picked up on the third ring. “What up, Nay-Nay?”
“I’m at Dad’s place. They took him off Exelon—”
“Off what?”
“One of his meds. They took him off it for nausea and dizziness, but he’s dizzy without it, too. They tried the patch form, but that doesn’t work either.” She ran her fingers through her bluntly cut blond hair. “His complex-motor stuff’s getting worse, and I guess he threw his pills at a nurse this morning.”
“Did they hit her?”
“Jason.”
“Okay, I’m sorry. Look, that’s what the nurses are there for.”
“To have pills thrown at them?”
“You know what I mean. We pay good money for the care. It’s a nice place.”
“I know. I’ve actually seen it.” She realized she was making a fist around her hair at the back of her head. “I’m just saying, you should probably get out here and see him. Soon, I mean. And Robbie. Hell, Robbie I can’t even get on the phone.”
“But he sends a check. It’s been fair all the way through.”
“This isn’t about fair . We’re not eight years old, Jason. I’m here every other day—”
“That’s because you live in D.C. And look, it’s your choice, N.”
“No shit it’s my choice. I’m talking about your choices. It would mean a lot to Dad if you got your ass on a plane once in a while. You know how he feels about you and Robbie. It’s different.”
“It’s not different.”
The lie was half-hearted; Jason barely bothered to disguise the nicety with a tone shift. She could hear voices in the background, someone shouting out a ticker update.
“Look,” Jason said, “with Tammy and the kids, you know, four schedules, four directions. You don’t appreciate how hard it is when you have a family.”
“Jason, I’ve met your family. I appreciate how hard it is.”
He laughed. “You know what I mean. And come on, the old man wouldn’t recognize me anyway. He’s lucky to have you there.”
She resisted the urge to fill the silence.
Jason finally said, “I’ll send you more money next month so he can get … I don’t know, more time with the staff or whatever.”
“I don’t need more money. I need—he needs—someone else here who loves him. He still likes listening to music and looking at his and Mom’s wedding album—”
The workplace noise grew louder in the background. “I gotta hop, N. News just hit the tape, and I’ve gotta whack some bids. Talk later.”
The call severed with a click.
Naomi pocketed the phone, walked back to the nurses’ station, and looked down at her father’s file.
Amanaki clacked away at her keyboard. “I been here a lotta years, and I can tell you, women are better at this.”
“At not being selfish dicks?”
Amanaki’s smile felt, as always, like the clouds had parted to let through a blast of soul-warming beauty. “Yeah, I’d say we are. Men talk a lot. Women stay and take care of what needs to be taken care of.”
Naomi’s phone vibrated in the zip pocket of her tights—Jason calling back? The flare of hopefulness she felt was accompanied quickly with a pang of self-recrimination. When it came to her brothers, she knew better than to allow naï ve optimism to worm its way to the surface.
As she dug in her pocket, she realized that it wasn’t her personal phone that was vibrating but her secure Boeing Black smartphone.
She thumbed the ANSWER icon. “This is Templeton.”
“Special Agent in Charge Templeton?”
“The very one.”
“We need you here immediately.”