“I love you,” Shannon breathed, reaching for her mother’s hand and squeezing hard. “We’re going to get through this.” They had to.
But Arietta seemed unsure what to say to that. Together, they gazed down at that friendly sounding blackmail letter and listened as the rain barrelled down on the house. Shannon could hardly hear herself think.
16
It was the morning after Shannon’s spontaneous return to Nantucket Island. Arietta hadn’t slept a wink the night before. She’d spent hours in the darkness, tossing and turning and thinking about the blackmail letter. Luckily, Shannon hadn’t demanded an explanation as to why Arietta didn’t want to call the police. Shannon had put two and two together herself. But allowing Shannon to know this much—that Arietta was nervous about the life her husband had left behind in the wake of his stroke—felt like a poison, getting to her from the inside. She’d wanted Shannon to remember her father lovingly. She’d wanted her to be able to honor her memories of him, long after he was fully conscious.
At six thirty that morning, Shannon was already at the breakfast table with a cup of coffee and a strained look on her face. Arietta poured herself a mug and sat, watching the pink sunrise over the water. She wished they could engage in this beauty without fear.
“I’m glad you’re here, honey,” Arietta said. She wanted to ask Shannon what had made her come to the island last night. She wanted to ask Shannon if she’d had an intuition about Arietta’ssafety. But she kept quiet. She didn’t feel ready to dig into all that yet.
“Me too,” Shannon said. “I think I might stay for a little while, if that’s all right with you?”
Arietta felt the tension in her chest slowly easing. If Shannon was here, perhaps she could sleep better. Maybe, just maybe, Fred would slowly begin to recognize them both.
This last thought was so based in fantasy that it nearly destroyed Arietta. She knew Fred wouldn’t come out of this state. This “vegetative state.”
She couldn’t indulge in fantasies.
“Do you want to go for a hike today?” Shannon asked.
Arietta wondered if Shannon wanted to corner her somewhere on an empty beach and demand answers about the blackmail letter. But who was Arietta to refuse her daughter’s request to hike with her? They’d always had a unique and beautiful relationship. Arietta considered Fred down the hall, then remembered the nurse she could call for help.
“All right,” she said.
Arietta and Shannon dressed in shorts and tank tops, then greeted the nurse as she entered the foyer as though she’d entered it a thousand times before. “I know what to do,” the nurse said. “You ladies go out and have fun.”
Arietta and Shannon drove down to Madequecham Beach, where the hike began. Arietta adjusted her backpack and watched as Shannon gulped her water. The sun was hotter than usual for June, and Arietta considered asking her daughter to put on sunscreen. Old habits died hard. Before she said a thing, Shannon began to smear it on, then handed the tube over to Arietta, who did the same.
For the first half hour, they spoke of nothing more than the world around them. They pointed out birds, the sounds of the waves, and the feel of the sand beneath their tennis shoes.Arietta talked more about the people she’d met on Nantucket Island so far—the Salt Sisters—and also about Jasper’s request that she write about their Alzheimer’s convention back in Athens.
“Oh, Mom,” Shannon said softly, turning around to look Arietta in the eye. “Doesn’t it sound wonderful to get back to work?”
Arietta had to admit that it would be fantastic to get back into that flow again. She remembered the feeling of her fingers flying over the keys, and her mind making logical leaps that eventually made their way into the articles. She remembered staying up till four in the morning, reading academic articles and research papers about topics that thrilled her.
Rather than agree, Arietta asked Shannon about her most recent research at Yale. Shannon spoke about her experiment, which had given her some trouble at first.
“But I got through it,” Shannon said, smiling.
It wasn’t like Shannon to have problems with research or her labs. But Arietta knew that they were all getting through the issue of Fred’s stroke in different ways.
When they returned to the house that afternoon, Arietta had a missed call on her cell from Jasper, saying that he’d come to the island earlier than expected and that he’d love to go out. “Let’s go to this new seafood restaurant near Steps Beach,” he said in his message. “I hear it’s divine.”
Arietta felt a smile flutter over her lips. A moment later, guilt crashed into her. Up until very recently, she and Fred might have tried that restaurant out together. They might have made a list of all the things they wanted to do in Nantucket this summer: the hikes they wanted to get to, the places they wanted to sail to, and the food they wanted to indulge in. Fred and Arietta had loved broadening their interests together. Even during the “off” years of their marriage, the years when they hadn’t gotten alongas well as others, they’d loved pushing the boundaries on their couple activities.
But now, Arietta turned to Shannon in the living room and asked if she could stay home with her father tonight. “Jasper’s already in town,” she explained. “I want to talk to him about the article.”
Shannon smiled. “I’d be happy to.”
Arietta made Shannon a list of everything she needed to tend to while Arietta was gone. The harder stuff—washing Fred and getting him changed for the night—Arietta could get to when she got home. “It’s pretty easy,” she said, explaining her protocol around medicine and food and liquids. Together, she and Shannon stood beside Fred’s bed, talking about his body as though it were something they could control. As far as either of them knew, Fred couldn’t hear them.
Neither of them mentioned that, of course.
Jasper pickedArietta up a little after seven. Standing at the front door in his Egyptian cotton button-down and fabulous linen pants, with his thick head of dark hair and his thick eyebrows, he looked very handsome, like a character in a film. He said hello to Shannon, who adored him and had read almost all of his articles over the years.
“You’re all grown up, aren’t you?” Jasper said. “Your mother tells me that you’re going to end our careers as we know them. When there’s no Alzheimer’s to write about, what on earth will we do?” He grinned.
Shannon laughed. “I’m sure you’ll find something else to write about.”