CHAPTER FOUR
“HIYA, MOLLY,” ONE OF the front desk staff members said as I entered through the automatic doors of a two-story brick building.
“Hey, Reggie,” I responded to the slim, older black man, the little hair he had left graying in places. I approached the counter, taking the clipboard he handed me, all too familiar with the procedure at this point. “Catch the game last night?”
“Sure did. That team hasn’t been the same since your brother retired.”
A smile tugged at my lips as I signed the visitor’s log. “You’re just saying that so I’ll get you some more signed jerseys.”
“No. It’s the truth,” he assured me. “But I wouldn’t turn down a jersey or two, either. My brother’s a big fan.” He placed a visitor badge on the counter and I grabbed it, clipping it to my shirt.
“How’s he doing today?” I asked, my expression falling.
“He’s having as good a day as he can, given the circumstances.”
I closed my eyes and straightened my spine, steeling myself for what awaited me down the corridor. Drew didn’t understand why I came here every day, considering I didn’t see my dad that much when he still lived at the house I grew up in. I couldn’t abandon my father. I hated that we even had to put him in a place like this. I liked to think Vincenzo Brinks had so much more life left in him. Still, he couldn’t live on his own anymore. If we didn’t do this, I feared we’d check in on him one day to learn he’d wandered off, unsure of who he was and where he lived.
“Don’t take it personally.” Reggie clutched my hand and I opened my eyes, meeting his. “He loves you. It’s the disease that makes him like this.”
Forming my lips into a straight line, not showing any emotion, I simply nodded. I’d heard that same thing too many times to count.
I turned from Reggie and walked down the corridor, my knee-high boots clicking against the linoleum floor. This place had a strange smell to it. Lemon cleaner. Baby powder. School lunch turkey dinner. However, it was the best facility around for chronic neurodegenerative diseases. It just so happened the neurologist who had been treating my father the past few years was on the staff here. That made the choice in facilities a no-brainer.
I passed a few decorative trees, smiling at some familiar faces. It didn’t matter how much they tried to make it look like this was just another apartment complex. It was still an inpatient facility that reminded me of the convalescent homes I visited during Christmas when I was forced to sing in my church choir as a young child.
Coming to a stop outside a white door, the number 127 on a plaque beside it, I placed my hand on the knob and turned. Upon entering, there was a small sitting area with a couch and two reading chairs directly across from a wall-mounted flat-screen television. A desk sat against the opposite wall, along with a bookcase boasting some of my father’s favorites. At the far end of the room was a doorway leading to his private bedroom and en-suite bathroom. When we had to make the difficult decision to put him in here, we wanted this place to feel as close to home as possible. We’d packed up all the trinkets and photos he had displayed prominently in the house I grew up in. Glancing at them now, I realized I was only in one of them.
Walking to the bookcase, I grabbed a black-and-white photo, studying it. I couldn’t have been more than two or three at the time. I sat beneath a large oak tree in one of the gated parks in the city. My mother stood behind me, staring at the camera. A huge smile lit up my face. She looked sad, lost, unfulfilled.
I ran my fingers over her face, my features nearly similar to hers. Large doe-like eyes, light blonde hair with chestnut accents, high cheekbones, fair skin. Once she left, I felt like the outcast of the family. It was apparent that Drew was my father’s son. His olive-toned skin, caramel eyes, and dark hair was identical to my father’s and the rest of my extended family’s. I stood out like a nun in a strip club. I didn’t look like I belonged. Sometimes I didn’t feel like I did, either.
“Josie, is that you?”
I tightened my grip on the frame and took a deep breath, readying myself for yet another afternoon of confusion. I stared at the unhappy woman my father thought I was, then placed the photo back on the bookshelf. As I turned around and my eyes fell on my father in the doorway, my jaw tensed, my fists clenched, my pulse soared. I shouldn’t have been nervous, but this man in front of me wasn’t my father. He hadn’t been for months now.
“Are you okay, Ms. Brinks?” The orderly pushing his wheelchair looked at me with concern.
“Of course.” I gave him a forced smile, swallowing hard. I was anything but okay as I looked at the shell of a man my father had become. He always seemed larger than life, his raucous laughter bellowing through the halls of the modest house in Somerville I called home throughout my childhood. He would swoop me up with little effort and hoist me onto his shoulders, racing around the halls like he didn’t have a care in the world. The man staring back at me now was weak and beaten down by Alzheimer’s, his once strong body frail.
I stepped toward the door, grabbing the handles of the wheelchair and pushing it farther into the sitting area. “I’ll take it from here, Jeffrey.”
He raised a brow. “Are you sure?” he whispered. “He’s been a bit aggressive today. I can stay, if you’d like.”
“He’s not going to hurt me,” I responded in a low voice. “He’s my father.”
“But he doesn’t realize that.”
I fought back tears I had kept at bay since we’d learned about my father’s condition over three years ago. As the disease continued eating away at the man he once was, it had become more and more difficult to keep it in.
“Maybe today he finally will.”
He hadn’t known who I was for over a year now. Still, I held out hope something would trigger a memory the disease hadn’t gotten to yet. I yearned to hear him call me Molly one more time before he was taken from me, despite the medical staff telling me the chance of that was highly unlikely. Maybe that was why I came here every afternoon and read to him. By getting lost in one of the books we’d bonded over when I was younger, maybe he’d finally look at me and see his daughter, not his estranged wife or a stranger here to do him harm.
“Okay, Ms. Brinks. Buzz me if you need anything.”
I nodded, refusing to turn back around and face Jeffrey. I didn’t want to see the concern and empathy in his expression. When the door clicked, I blew out a breath, parking my dad’s wheelchair in the sitting area across from one of the reading chairs.
“Would you like some water?” I headed to the small kitchenette and opened the door to the mini fridge.
“You don’t have to wait on me, Josie. Come and talk to me. Ever since the baby was born, you never talk to me anymore.”
I wanted to scream, I’m not Josie! She left you years ago! I’m that baby! But I didn’t. This wasn’t my father talking. Like the doctors and nurses had reminded me over and over again, it was the disease. No matter how many times I’d heard it, though, I couldn’t help but feel I had done something to make myself completely forgettable in my father’s eyes. How could someone simply forget a person they bathed, clothed, loved, and protected for over twenty years?
“Like I’ve already told you,” I said evenly through the ache in my chest, “I’m not Josie.” I twisted the cap off the water and grabbed a straw from the drawer, popping it in the bottle. When I glanced up, I noticed a mischievous smile tugging at his mouth. “What?”
“I get it.” He winked. “Role play. I like it.”
I gripped the counter, drawing in a breath, recalling Dr. McAllister’s directive to switch the topic if I ever felt uncomfortable.
Ignoring his last remark, I headed toward the sitting area, bringing his water to him. “What book would you like to read today? Do you want another thriller? Or something different? You’ve always enjoyed military books. We could read one of those.”
He grabbed my arm as I set his water on the small table beside him. “And what kind of husband would I be if I always chose what we read? No, Josie. You choose. Tell me a love story.”
He began running his fingers up my arm in an affectionate manner. I ripped it away from him, wishing life weren’t so unfair, wishing my father could remember me, not think I was his wife who left him over two decades ago because we weren’t enough for her. The woman who refused to even return a phone call when I tried to reach out and inform her about my father’s condition. The woman who broke all her promises to us.
I stepped up to the bookcase, perusing its contents. My eyes settled on the spine of a book. I pulled it off the shelf, the cover tattered and torn after being read and reread countless times during my adolescence. I remembered swooning over Mr. Darcy before I knew what swooning truly was. In my mind, no man could ever compare to him. Whenever I had a bad experience with a guy years ago, Mr. Darcy was always there for me. I was pretty sure he had ruined me for all real men. Perhaps that was why I hid behind a laptop and wrote fictional accounts of every woman’s fantasy man. Because the fantasy was always better than real life.
I settled into the reading chair, subtly pushing it back just a little to keep my distance from my father, and opened the book.
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”
It felt like I was seeing an old friend again for the first time in years. Jane Austen’s words provided me a sense of comfort, and I was able to forget about all my troubles for a minute as I returned to her world.