Best Place to Die by Charles Atkins Page B

Alzheimer’s.’
    A pause on the line. ‘Thank God. Thank God.’
    Ada could swear the man was crying. ‘Are you OK?’
    â€˜Not really,’ he offered, ‘but a little better now. Alice is my grandmother. Her apartment is next to Rose’s. I got her out of her apartment and asked your mother to stay with her and get her outside, but I haven’t seen her since, and she gets so confused; she wanders, too. I didn’t know where she was, or if . . . thank God. Things are so crazy here. I know we don’t know each other, but I can’t leave here right now, is there any way you could keep an eye on her for the next few hours? I’ll try to get there as soon as I can.’
    â€˜Stop right there,’ Ada said. ‘She’s safe, we can keep an eye on her for as long as you need. Let me have your numbers, and I’ll give you mine. Do what you need to do. Your grandmother is fine. Does she have any special needs? Medications? Foods she can’t eat?’
    â€˜Not really, just some pills for the dementia that don’t really work. If she misses a dose or two it doesn’t matter. I’ll call you as soon as I can. And, Mrs Strauss—’
    â€˜Ada,’ she interrupted firmly.
    â€˜Ada . . . thank you so much. I can’t tell you what a load you’ve just taken off my mind.’
    As Ada hung up, she spotted Lil coming up the walk, and glancing behind at Aaron in the living room tending to her mother and Alice, she went out. Across the walk she spotted Clayton Spratt in the window of the unit directly across from hers, holding back the curtain and staring.
Bastard
, she thought, glaring back, and wondering when the other shoe would drop on his threats about reporting Aaron living with her to the homeowner’s board. She kept her voice low. ‘What a mess.’
    â€˜At least she’s OK, and that Alice woman . . .’
    â€˜Her last name’s Sullivan. A nurse at Nillewaug called checking on Rose. Apparently he’s her grandson. I told him not to worry. It seems like he’s trying to track down all the residents.’ Ada’s gaze met Lil’s. ‘What am I going to do? I feel sick, all my mother’s things; she could have died in that place . . . What have I done?’
    Standing there, feeling exposed as their across-the-walk neighbors stared. ‘We’ll figure this out,’ Lil said, desperately wanting to hold Ada, to tell her that everything would be OK, but she didn’t. And something about that felt dead wrong. If Ada had been Bradley, he’d be holding her, and no one would have blinked an eye. Lil turned her head and spotted Clayton in the window with his pinched lemon-sucking expression, and then in the kitchen window of Bernice Framm’s directly across from her unit, movement in the corner of her cutesy cat curtains. ‘Life in a fishbowl,’ she whispered.
    â€˜She’s going to have to stay with me.’ Ada stated the obvious.
    â€˜I know.’
    â€˜Lil, I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but . . . I don’t know how long I’ll be able to take it. You heard her. As far as she’s concerned I lit that place on fire.’
    â€˜She’s scared, and you’re the only safe person around. And she’s still angry about leaving New York. But what were you supposed to do? Her visiting nurse had said they couldn’t keep her on as a patient because of the liability of her living alone, and she absolutely refused a live in. She left you with no choice.’
    Ada stared down the walk, which was lined with daffodil shoots, about a week from blooming. In the distance they heard a lone siren as it made its way from Nillewaug to Brattlebury Hospital. ‘You know what she wanted . . .’
    â€˜But that wasn’t going to happen,’ Lil said, mentally tracing Ada’s profile, her firm jaw and high cheekbones. ‘Yes, she’s