Next of Kin by Dan Wells Page A

before.
    “How are you, Dad? It’s me, Brian, your son. No, Gordon’s not here, that’s your brother. He died thirty years ago.”
    “Hi Mom. I said, ‘HI MOM, HOW ARE YOU?’ Say hi, Maddy, but say it loud so she can hear you. MOM, THIS IS MADISON. Say hi, honey.”
    “Do you remember our old house on third? The biggest house in the neighborhood, and my mother kept it so clean. Did you ever go to that house? Oh, it was wonderful, with a wrought-iron gate and the most beautiful roses in a bright white trellis on the wall. Do you remember when you pricked your finger there?”
    I stood at the reception desk, and the nurse smiled. “Hello, Mr. Sexton. How are you today?”
    “I’m fine, thanks. How’s Merrill doing?”
    “I’m sure he’ll be great now that you’re here.” Her voice was chipper, but a hint of sourness crept into it as she talked. “I wish his family visited as often as you do. Do you know he has three grandchildren? And his family almost never visits at all? The cutest little grandchildren you’ve ever seen. They were in here over the summer.”
    “I’m sure they come in when they can,” I said.
    “They could come more than they do,” she said, shaking her head and picking up the phone. I put out my hand to stop her.
    “Don’t bother calling—he’s not good over the phone. I’ll just show myself up.”
    “That’s fine,” she said. “You know the way.” She smiled, and I smiled back, but I only got a step away before she called after me.
    “Mr. Sexton? Remind me again how you know Mr. Evans?”
    “I met him once,” I said, “not long before the . . . Alzheimer’s. He was a good man.”
    “I’m sure he was,” she said. She’d only worked here a few years, so she didn’t know either of us well.
    I turned again, my gaze rolling across the foyer full of visitors and residents and catching on one in particular: a teenage boy, skinny in his baggy coat, with ragged black hair that seemed almost deliberately uncombed; his own private rebellion against his mother or grandmother or whoever made him come in here today. He wasn’t talking to anybody, just sitting in the corner, waiting. Expressionless. I longed, sometimes, for that lack of feeling. It would make so many things so much simpler.
    Whiteflower was one of the new-style Assisted Living Centers, more like a hotel than a hospital. Merrill Evans lived in room 312; a dark red vase sat on the shelf outside his door, a sort of mental hook to help the residents find their rooms when they couldn’t remember the number. Merrill got the vase on a trip to San Francisco with his wife, and he remembers it sometimes. I knocked on his door and waited while he shuffled close enough to yell out.
    “Who’s there?”
    “It’s Elijah.” Not my real name, but the one I’ve been using the last twenty years or so. The only one he’d know me by, if he knew me at all.
    “Who?”
    So he didn’t know me today. “I’m your friend, Merrill. I’ve come to talk to you.”
    “All my friends died in Vietnam.”
    What little he remembered changed from day to day; today it looked like he remembered the war. “You fought in the Tet Offensive,” I told him. “I fought there, too.” It wasn’t even a lie.
    He grumbled and opened the door, but his wrinkled face scowled when he saw me. “Hell, you didn’t fight in ’Nam. You weren’t even born yet.”
    “I have a young face,” I said, which wasn’t technically a lie either. I’d looked about forty years old for centuries.
    Merrill grumbled some more but opened the door. “Nothing else to do around this place,” he said, and walked back to his recliner, slowly but steadily. His mind was gone, but his body was still strong; he was sixty-five years old, younger than most of the residents in the building, but early onset Alzheimer’s was common enough, and he couldn’t take care of himself, so here he was. Healthy as a horse, empty as a drum.
    “Did you bring my lunch?” he