“That cat? I’ve never seen it before, and it sure as hell doesn’t belong in this house. Your mother’s allergic, you know.”
“But-” West was about to say that his mother didn’t live here anymore, except he wasn’t sure it would do any good to point it out right now.
Hadn’t Margie said he should choose his battles? So long as the cat was outside, they had time to see if his father would return to the present day and remember that his beloved pet for the past decade actually did belong there.
His father turned on the radio next to his desk and adjusted the volume on a talk show, then settled back in his chair to listen.
Some welcome home.
“Hey, Dad, I’m going to make a few phone calls, then maybe we can have a cup of coffee and catch up.”
“Eh? Can you be quiet? I’m listening to my show right now.”
Right.
West closed the front door and locked it, then went into the kitchen again. He put a pot of coffee on, noticing at every turn signs of decay. The house was no longer the pristine home his mother once kept, but that was nothing new.
The divorce long past, his father, in spite of his talk of high standards, had been letting things slide in his bachelor years. Two more wives had come and gone, each less patient and less forgiving than Julia Morgan had been, and with the crumbling of each marriage, the General had seemed a little less like his former stickler self.
It was as if he didn’t have the energy to be the man in command of every detail anymore, as evidenced by cobwebs in the corners and a thin coating of grime on the stove top.
“Women’s work,” his father had always said of housekeeping-far out of his element in a postfeminist world.
West, on the other hand, considered keeping a home in good order a fact of life. It was simply part of being an adult. So he grabbed the duster from the cleaning caddy that had always been stored under the sink and got rid of the cobwebs, then gave the stove top a good scrubbing. Once he’d completed those tasks, he felt a little more at ease in the room and sat at the table to call his mother.
He wanted to hear a normal voice right now, one that didn’t have any bad news to bear. Because as soon as he stopped thinking about his father, thoughts of Soleil being pregnant took over.
He was going to be a father, for better or worse. He was going to be responsible for a child in less than four months. And here was his own father, turning into a two-hundred-pound belligerent child.
Would West be able to cope? Would he be a better father than his own dad had been?
Somehow, he would have to be.
JULIA DIDN’T LIKE the look on her middle son’s face. Something was definitely wrong, to have him looking so troubled and showing up at such an odd time of year, too. Normally West arrived in town like clockwork for the holidays, the weekend before Christmas-not weeks ahead of time.
“Can I get you a glass of cabernet?” she asked as he sat at the breakfast bar across from her.
She had her hands immersed in a tossed salad, trying to coax the grape tomatoes back to the top of the pile of vegetables.
“Why don’t I get it? You’ll have one, too?” he said, standing and heading for the wine rack before she could stop him.
“Sure. There’s already a bottle breathing over by the fridge.”
Having one of her children here in her post-divorce condo always felt a little odd to her, even after all these years. Some silly part of her thought they were only supposed to be together as a family at the house she and John had bought after he’d retired from the military. They’d lived in the house as a family for maybe the last five or six years of the marriage, but in her head, she’d imagined all their family get-togethers from then on out happening at that grand old Craftsman. That was before she’d accepted that the marriage was over and somehow she couldn’t shake the image.
Here in her little condo, which had become her refuge from the ugliness of her marriage, her children felt like reminders of the ways in which she’d failed. And that was a notion she’d never, ever speak out loud.
“So what’s new with you?” he asked as he prepared the drinks.
Oh, the usual. Online dating, meeting up with strange men, et cetera.
She bit her lip to keep from grinning. Sometimes she could hardly believe her own nerve. Would she dare tell West what she’d done?
Not right now.
“I’ve been volunteering for the literacy program at the library, doing some knitting, yoga, hiking…Oh, and I’ll have to introduce you to the new rabbits I’m fostering. They’re confined to the garage until they learn better potty manners.”
West set her glass of wine beside her, and she realized she was rambling. Possibly sounding guilty.
“Keeping busy as always,” he said, lifting his glass.
She took hers and toasted. “To surprise visits from my children.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t give you more notice. This was kind of a last-minute thing.”
His tense expression returned as he paused and took a drink.
“What’s going on, West?”
“It’s Dad,” he said. “He’s been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.”
The news struck Julia dumb for a moment. She swallowed her wine and struggled to wrap her mind around the idea. Her ex-husband, the father of her children, the invincible General she’d both loved and hated for more years than she could count, never got sick.
He was too ornery to get sick.
But it was as she’d feared when she’d heard West’s voice earlier over the phone.
“Oh…” She set down her glass, put her hand over her mouth.
“It’s progressed faster than I thought it would. In a matter of months he’s gone from being forgetful to downright belligerent and disoriented.”
“Oh…”
Now she was repeating herself like an idiot. She needed to come up with something helpful to say, but she was shocked senseless.
“Mom, sit down.” West took her by the elbow, guiding her out of the kitchen and into the family room.
She lowered herself onto the couch, and he sat next to her.
“Do you need some water?”
“Alzheimer’s disease,” she murmured, the diagnosis sounding completely absurd to her ears still.
West went to the kitchen, filled a glass with tap water and brought it to her. She took a halfhearted sip and set the glass aside.
“I know it’s a shock. It’s taken me a while to accept it myself. And I really thought we’d have more time before he’d get so…bad.”
“Who’s caring for him?” Julia finally found the sense to ask.
“We’ve had home-health nurses coming in for the past few months, but he keeps chasing them off. That’s why I moved up my vacation time-so I could come here and try to get him some reliable care.”
“You’ve known about this since the summer and haven’t told me? Your brothers have known? No one’s said a word.”
“I’m sorry. I wasn’t ready to talk about it, and we all thought we had more time.”
“Oh, dear Lord, West. I’m so sorry, too. I never thought I’d live to see the day your father couldn’t take care of himself.”
There. She’d said something appropriate, something sympathetic, but it didn’t begin to reveal the torrent of feelings threatening to choke her right now.
From the kitchen a buzzer sounded, reminding her that the tri-tip roast was done. “Let me get that before it burns,” she said as she stood and headed for the other room.
“Need some help?”
“Sure, I think we could use the distraction. Can you chop some mushrooms?”
