“Your blackmailers are crafty people,” he said, teasing them.
Shannon thought she was going to scream. She wanted to tell Officer Turnwell to take their grief and their fears seriously. She demanded to see another officer. But she had the hunch that there was nobody else around.
“Is there anything else?” Officer Turnwell asked.
Shannon and Arietta had told him everything they could. At least, Shannon thought they had. It was impossible to know if her mother was keeping something private, something for herself, if only to protect her marriage and Fred. Shannon was exhausted.
They’d bookedFred’s nurse for the next several hours, and although Arietta was exhausted, Shannon suggested they use their time out of the house wisely. Neither of them was hungry, so they grabbed coffee on the boardwalk and watched tourists mill about in gorgeous outfits, eating croissants and talking about their upcoming afternoons on their sailboats. Arietta hadn’t said anything for more than thirty minutes, and Shannon ached to know what was on her mind.
Suddenly, Arietta began to laugh gently. She set her cup of coffee down and wiped a tear from her cheek. “I can’t get my mother’s voice out of my head.”
Shannon was surprised. It had been a while since they’d spoken about Grandma Regina, although she knew that she was never far from either of their minds. She was the reason that Arietta wrote almost obsessively about Alzheimer’s research.She was the reason Shannon had thrown herself so completely into the world of memory research and neuroscience.
“She told me not to marry him, you know,” Arietta said.
“Grandma told you not to marry Dad?” Shannon gasped. A few tourists glanced at them, having overheard. It certainly did sound like juicy gossip.
“She did. I don’t think she thought I would be happy with him,” Arietta said. “Obviously, I was in no position to listen to her. What twentysomething listens to her mother? This is part of the reason I try never to give you and your sisters any advice. It’s like screaming into an abyss.”
Shannon let out a nervous laugh.
Arietta sipped her coffee. There was animation in her eyes. “When I got that blackmail letter, my first thought was it was an affair. Of course it was. Like all marriages, Fred and I had our ups and downs. We loved each other more, sometimes, than we did other times. I figured that was natural.”
“It sounds natural,” Shannon offered, although she, at twenty-four and single, knew less than zero about marriages.
Arietta shrugged. “But now that he’s in this state, now that I’m spending so many hours of my day making sure he’s comfortable and fed and washed, I don’t know. I don’t know if I can hear about his scandalous, sexy affairs. I don’t know if I can hear about how happy he was with other women, now that I’m the one left to pick up the pieces.”
Tears began to roll down Arietta’s cheeks. Shannon reached for her mother’s free hand, but Arietta brushed it aside, as though she couldn’t take that level of tenderness.
“People have affairs,” Shannon breathed, trying to offer compassion to both of her parents. “That doesn’t make it right, of course. But it happens. It’s been happening since the beginning of marriages.”
Arietta’s eyes were lined with pink. “I’ve had friends who’ve had affairs. Women back in Boston who ran around behind their husbands’ backs. Of course, it’s important to remember that their husbands were running around behind their backs, too. Some of them told me that I should have an affair of my own, that it would ‘protect’ me emotionally if I ever found out that your father was cheating on me. But I never had it in me to cheat. All I wanted to do was love him.”
At the idea that so many wives were cheating as a way of protecting themselves, Shannon felt a heaviness in her chest. She remembered that Cole had been cheating on her, too. Should she have protected herself? Should she have had a flirtation, at least, on the side? It wasn’t her way. But maybe “her way” was only going to hurt her down the line.
“Oh, but if these blackmailers want to take everything from me over a silly affair,” Arietta continued. “That’s just about the stupidest thing, isn’t it?” She sniffed and tried to laugh it off.
“It’s just an affair.” Shannon prayed that that was all it was.
Arietta was quiet for a moment. “His mistress must live near you. Near Yale. I wonder if she’s a professor or something like that.”
Shannon had been thinking about this, too. She couldn’t imagine when her father would have met his Yale-based mistress. But what really turned her stomach was the idea that her father had been near her sometimes as many as three times a month, and he hadn’t bothered to call her. He hadn’t bothered to meet her for coffee. He hadn’t cared.
This stung more than the affair, she thought.
“You can’t pay them,” Shannon said gently.
Arietta sighed. “I know that. But I also don’t think the cops are going to be of much help tracking whoever this is down.”
“Doesn’t seem like it.” Shannon and Arietta shared a secret smile. Shannon considered bringing up the fact of her father’shealth. She considered asking her mother if it was better to find a safe, comfortable, and clean place for Fred to live for the rest of his life. Somewhere they could visit him, and he wouldn’t serve as a permanent reminder of everything Arietta had lost—both when he was conscious and when he was not.
But before Shannon could find the words, Arietta stood and said it was time to head back home. “I want to do something with my day,” she said firmly. “That article for Jasper won’t write itself.”
21
During the week after Arietta and Shannon’s trip to the police station, a week during which they didn’t hear at all from the blackmailers (nor send them any money, obviously), Arietta did little but research and write her article. It was shaping into something she was proud of. But more than that, it was nourishing to put her brain elsewhere; it was invigorating to remember that she could push herself mentally and create logical connections that excited her about the future of Alzheimer’s research and care.
With each sentence she typed across her document, she felt closer to obliterating this heinous disease. She felt closer to her mother, too. This is for you, Mom, she thought. I love you. I miss you. I know you’re still here.