Arietta offered Fred a kind smile. She loved that he didn’t want to leave their other daughters out, not even in a conversation that had nothing to do with Felicity and Isabelle.
“They surely get their brains from their parents!” Jasper declared. “How is Shannon doing at Yale?”
“She’s doing very well,” Arietta said, although they hadn’t heard much from Shannon in the past few months. “She’s dating another neuroscientist, if you can believe that.”
“The two of them can figure this stuff out for all of us, as far as I’m concerned,” Jasper said.
“I hope they can,” Arietta said, feeling breathless. What if Shannon figured out how to cure Alzheimer’s? What if their beautiful and brilliant daughter changed the world?
Over the nextthree days in Athens, Arietta interviewed specialists, wrote fifty pages of notes for future articles, and broadened her understanding of Alzheimer’s research. As she worked, Fred did a bit of work himself, fielding calls from his employees—employees at the same business his father had owned and his grandfather had started. It had to do with financial planning and was entirely the reason Fred and Arietta Peters were never hurting for cash flow.
Arietta was pretty sure that Fred would never understand what it meant to be broke. Strangely, she was grateful that sheunderstood it, that she’d had those broke experiences. She’d once been a very poor college student and thought she would face a lifetime of pinching pennies.
She was grateful it hadn’t worked out like that, of course. However, she wasn’t always comfortable with having so much wealth.
Just a glance around their immaculate Athens apartment was proof of Fred’s money. It towered over Athens, and its tremendous windows glowed with golden light every afternoon. From those windows, you could see the sea just beyond the tops of the buildings. The turquoise of it seemed to stretch on and on. The apartment had four bedrooms, two of which Arietta and Fred used as offices, and their kitchen was state-of-the-art, though they didn't use it much, not with so many restaurants around. It was more space than two people ever needed. Fred didn’t bat an eye.
Every night before they fell asleep, Arietta lay on her side in bed and gazed at Fred in the darkness. Here he was, her husband of twenty-five years! How had that happened? Usually, he fell asleep almost immediately, and she listened to his soft, deep breathing and thanked her lucky stars they were together, that they were still married. Many of her friends back in Boston, where they’d lived throughout their marriage, had gotten divorced. The divorces had seemed so messy because, usually, affairs were involved. People gossiped like crazy.
On the fourth morning, they packed their things and took a cab to the Piraeus Port, where a ferry waited to take them on their Greek island tour. Arietta could hardly wait. Although it was only nine in the morning, the sun was blisteringly hot, and Fred was sweating so much that they had to find shade. He used his sleeve to wipe his brow.
“We’ll get on the ferry and get something to drink,” Arietta said, narrowing her eyes. She didn’t like that Fred was turning a strange shade of yellowish green.
“Sounds good,” Fred said meekly.
Finally, the ferry arrived, and they climbed aboard. Fred was unsteady on his feet, and Arietta wondered if she could catch him if he fell. But falling wasn’t a thing Fred ever did, not even at his sickest.
They’d booked in first class, where air-conditioning chilled the seats and calmed Arietta’s breathing. Ferry workers hauled their bags to a nearby cart, then took their food and drink orders. Not many others had sprung for first class, which gave Fred and Arietta a bit of privacy. Fred took a long sip of water and tried to smile, but it seemed difficult.
“We can take it easy when we get to the island,” Arietta told him, rubbing his shoulder. “Or maybe taking a dip in the water would do you some good?”
Fred closed his eyes for a long time. There was a moment of terror, during which Arietta was sure that he was about to tell her that he wanted to leave her, that their marriage was over.
And then he said, “Lots of things going on in here.”
It didn’t make any sense.
Arietta turned to look around the room, but it was empty save for a sleeping woman in the corner. She thought maybe Fred was making a joke. Her stomach flipped. “Ha. Yeah. Nice to have a bit of quiet.”
But Fred was stricken. He furrowed his brow and leaned back in his chair. “The thing about equine sponsorship is,” he said, then continued with a bunch of gibberish that Arietta couldn’t make sense of. He gaped at her.
“Fred?” Arietta whispered. He was never one to be foolish.
Fred got to his feet and began to stagger. The ferry was already out on the water, moving like a giant beast toward theisland. He turned away from Arietta, but his left arm hung terribly, as though it were dead. He continued to say syllables that made no sense to her.
Arietta was beginning to panic. “Fred? Fred, look at me.” She hurried around him and gazed up at his face, a face she knew better than her own, a face she’d watched age.
When he spoke this time, one half of his face didn’t follow his words. It drooped like his arm.
Arietta understood that Fred was having a stroke.
Arietta cried out, then smashed the “alarm” bell on the wall beside them. Everything happened quickly after that. Ferry employees came in and called a doctor. A boat ambulance came screaming up beside the ferry, and emergency medical workers came aboard to take Fred away. All the while, Fred was on the floor, gaping at her, with panic in his eyes. She didn’t know whether he understood what was going on. It wasn’t clear how much of him was still present.
“Fred, I love you,” Arietta whispered. “Fred, stay with me. Please.”
2
Shannon lived in a one-bedroom apartment three blocks from Yale University. At twenty-four, she was a second-year neuroscience grad student, overwhelmed and exhausted almost all the time. The workload was tremendous, and although her father paid her rent, she’d taken a job at a research center not far from campus, hoping to boost her résumé. Plenty of students at Yale came from prominent families and had connections. She knew she had to stay active and push herself if she wanted the career in memory research that she craved.