Fixations weren’t uncommon in dementia patients. Checking and rechecking to ensure lights were turned off to save electricity costs. Fear that retirement savings had dried up. Paranoia that government agents were going to show up with arrest warrants. I had learned not to try to convince Shelby they weren’t true but rather to participate enough to tell a white lie and resolve the issue. “I’ll find one of her favorite shows on another channel.”

  Teresa tsked. “I wish we could, but the TV’s broken, remember?”

  Nothing quite like being reminded of something you forgot while visiting a dementia unit. I was paranoid of winding up in a place like this just like my wife, so every forgotten detail freaked me out.

  But the reminder about the TV not working did suggest that part of Shelby’s restlessness could be attributed to a lack of entertainment. Any parent of a small child knew the hypnotic power of the flickering lights and sound from the television. Without it here, more than the usual number of patients milled about the room. Sitting night after night with Shelby, I knew how hard the nurses worked and how much easier their jobs were if at least some of the patients were distracted with something. The TV wasn’t a luxury but a necessity. Budgets were tight, but why was something simple like this not solved? “No word yet on a new one?”

  Teresa’s laugh sounded less like amusement and more like exasperation. “Unless someone plants a money tree soon, I don’t think it’s happening. Let us know if you win the lottery or find some buried treasure.”

  In a way, I had found buried treasure, not in a hole but behind my spare tire. Whether from selling poison or stealing from people, that money had come from evil. Would it be wrong to use a little of it to give some sick people a little comfort? To offer some help to overworked nurses handling difficult tasks? Not to help just my wife but the rest of the staff and patients here. I had the ability to help, didn’t I? Maybe I was meant to find that money. I’d just take a little, a couple bundles of bills.

  When I turned the rest of it in to the police, they wouldn’t know any was missing. Only C.J. and I knew how much was in that bag.

  And the tattooed man, of course. Maybe. Maybe he didn’t know exactly how much was there. If he came to claim his money before I gave it to the police, I’d just give him the bag. Maybe even act like I didn’t know it was in the trunk, so he couldn’t suspect me.

  Standing there in the midst of that chaos, I made my decision. It was worth the risk.

  “I left my phone in my car. I’ll be right back.”

  Teresa looked startled and glanced across the room at Shelby’s back. “I don’t think she knows you’re here yet, so you’re good. Dinner will be served in thirty minutes.”

  My decision might have been made, but that didn’t mean doubts didn’t plague me. I hurried out of the building, debating with myself the whole way. Was it theft to steal stolen money? Could I get away with it without raising suspicions? Could I convince a friend to go along with my crazy idea?

  That last one was the biggest wild card, but first I had to retrieve the money from the trunk of my car. Hours remained before sunset, so the parking lot offered no camouflage. No shadows cast by overhead lights would hide my deed. And, being dinnertime, visitors walked to and from their cars. I nodded at the ones I knew, which was most of them in the usual curse of a small town. Fortunately, no one came over to chat, so I got to my car without anyone nearby. With a final, furtive glance, I opened the trunk and reached for the bag. I yanked it from its hiding place without thinking of what else was hidden. I dislodged the pistol, and it bounced noisily across the metal floor.

  With my head under the lid, the clattering sounded uncannily like a gunshot. I jumped, almost banging my head. My pulse raced, and my muscles tensed. I was sure it was so loud that someone would come over to see what I was up to. In this age of mass shootings, people might easily reach the wrong conclusion about an exposed weapon.

  If someone asked why I had a loose gun, what was my defense? Saying “I wasn’t going for the gun, just the stolen drug money” wouldn’t cast my actions in a better light.

  Fortunately, I didn’t have to find out. No one seemed to notice. I covered the gun with the plastic bag. After making sure no one was racing over to tackle me, I grabbed two random bundles of cash without looking and shoved them in my pocket. Checking one last time that nobody was watching, I slid the gun back into the bag so I wouldn’t make that mistake again. I tied the bag closed, placed it behind the spare, and closed the trunk. I leaned against the car and breathed a sigh of relief. People continued to come in and out of the building, but no one seemed to be concerned about me.

  Wiping my palms on my jeans, I reentered the nursing home and moved quickly down the corridors, but this time beyond the dementia unit. I had been through the door marked with a small Staff Only sign several times, but always with an employee. Staff members had used a badge to swipe the security lock. Without an accomplice, I didn’t have any way through. I thought about calling the friend I intended to visit, but what if he came to the hall to talk rather than letting me in? I didn’t want to hand him the money in the open where anyone could see.

  As I debated with myself, the door burst open. A young woman pushed a rolling food cart taller than herself through the opening. I instinctively grabbed the door and held it. She smiled and thanked me. As she pushed her goods toward the resident wings, she never looked back. I slipped into the employee section unauthorized.

  Getting in was one thing, but I needed to work my way through the entire section. The glass-enclosed administrative offices came first. I had been a frequent visitor because there was always a bill to settle or paperwork requiring i’s to be dotted and t’s crossed. Would anyone stop me? I inched down the hallway until I had a clear view. The lights were already off. The office staff had left for the day.

  Bright light flooded out of the next open door, the entrance to the staff lounge. I knew from previous visits that the room held all the usual accoutrements of an employee break room—vending machines, microwave, refrigerator, sink, tables, and chairs. Normally, several people sat around eating, drinking, or just chatting, so passing by the door unnoticed was unlikely. I tried my best to walk confidently, to look as though I belonged, and hoped no one challenged me as I passed. To my surprise, the room was empty. Mealtime in the residential areas was one of the busiest times in the facility, so no one was on break.

  The remainder of the hallway consisted of a few more doors, all closed, until I finally arrived at my destination—the maintenance area. The door was shut, but I guessed Bobby Jenkins would be working. He was one of the few guys my age still putting in a regular workday, and I had seen his truck in the parking lot. I stuck my head through the door and spied my target in the back corner of the room. He was soldering a broken joint in a wheelchair.

  Before I could speak, he must’ve sensed my presence. He flipped open his welder’s helmet and smiled. “Purvis. Haven’t seen you in a dog’s age. What brings you to my dungeon? Pull up a chair.”

  “I can’t stay. Have to get back to have dinner with Shelby, but I’ve got a favor to ask.”

  “Anything for you, and anything for Shelby. You know that.”

  “Hear me out before you agree.” I pushed the hallway door shut and leaned against the workbench. “I understand from Teresa Peters that money’s real tight. No way to get a new TV for the dementia unit.”

  Bobby nodded, his eyes downcast. “I work all the miracles I can keeping things humming around here, but I couldn’t get that thing working again. Amazing it lasted as long as it has. Been telling the suits for three years we better start replacing TVs before they go, but you know how bean counters are. They tell you they have to wait until they absolutely have to replace something, and then when it breaks, they act surprised.”

  “Yeah, I understand.” I tried not to watch the door, but I wondered how long I had until someone else came in. “If someone gave you a cash donation, you could replace it then, right?”

  “Depends.” Bobby took off his helmet and placed it gently on the workbench. “Let’s say a relative, like you, brought in an old TV and left it in that ward. Odds are pretty good it would stay there. But cash donations go to the office. You’d have to ask them if you could be specific about what they spent it on. I’d worry they’d tell you it would go into the general fund. Around here, that means it generally won’t go where you need it.”

  “Not quite the question I’m asking.” I wrapped my hand around the two bundles in my pocket. I hadn’t even looked to see what bills I had grabbed. What if it was two bundles of hundreds—twenty thousand dollars? How would I explain that? “What if you were handed the cash. Could you get the things needed without the suits getting involved?”

  Bobby’s chair squeaked in protest as he leaned back. He stared at the ceiling for a moment and asked, “Hypothetically?”

  After I nodded, he kept his eyes fixed on the fluorescent light. He let an uncomfortable silence settle before speaking. “My experience here says that the suits only care about money going out the door. They don’t ask a lot of questions about things that come in. We get things donated all the time, and no one asks a thing. So, yeah, I could probably figure out a way for a TV to work its way into Shelby’s unit.”

  I looked down at my hand resting on the workbench and was surprised to see it trembling. I had expected getting a single TV into a single unit wouldn’t be a big deal. As he said, if I brought in an old TV and placed it in the dementia unit, no one would think a thing about it. Giving him the cash to buy a TV wasn’t much different.

  But that felt selfish. I would be using the money to solve my problem but not helping anyone outside that unit. What if I could do more? “What about the other TVs? And the computers?”

  He hesitated. “That’d take a lot of money.”

  “But they wouldn’t ask?”

  He studied that overhead light more. “I don’t think so.”

  I shoved my shaking hands into my pockets as I edged the conversation to the point of no return. “And you?”

  “Some people, I would have to ask where the money came from.”

  “And me?”

  His eyes finally dropped from the ceiling and focused on me. “I would figure a guy like you probably just had it stuffed in a Mason jar or something. If you—er, a guy like you—trusted me to handle things the right way, then I would owe him the trust that he came by it honestly.”

  I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Too late to back out now. I had crossed the line. My hands shook as I pulled the two bundles out of my pocket and placed the cash on the workbench in front of us. To my relief, they were both twenty-dollar bills, but I cringed at the sight of the bright-purple band loudly announcing that each bundle held two thousand dollars. Why hadn’t I thought to remove that?

  Bobby’s eyes grew wide. He loosed a low whistle. “That’s some Mason jar.”

  Now that I was committed, I might as well go all the way. I could retrieve more cash from the car if needed. “Is it a big enough jar?”

  I held my breath as the clock on the wall ticked through a dozen seconds. Finally, Bobby slowly nodded. “Here’s what I’m thinking. If I went down to the Walmart and bought a bunch of new televisions, that would set all the tongues wagging around here. Somebody would end up getting suspicious and start asking questions I couldn’t answer.”

  My chest tightened as I lowered my head. I had pushed too far and asked too much. I reached for the money. “Sorry for asking. I don’t want to put you in a bad place.”

  Bobby raised his hand. “Hear me out. New stuff would be like sparkly baubles for crows. But old stuff scuffed up with some scratch marks but still working? Pawn shops, consignment stores, places like that—I could probably find what you’re talking about without raising too many eyebrows. The suits would think we got the broken stuff unbroken.”

  A glimmer of hope. “No one would notice?”

  “The nurses will know because nurses know everything, but they’d never say anything.” Bobby pursed his lips in thought but then nodded as he reached out and slid the money into a drawer like a Las Vegas dealer clearing a table. He extracted a key from the ring dangling from his belt and locked it up. “I’ll make sure it’s taken care of.”

  I stood and had my hand on the doorknob when Bobby stopped me. “The dementia unit’s TV will be the first one I ‘fix.’” He made quotes in the air with his fingers.

  20

  I made it back to the secured dementia unit before the food trays arrived. Teresa looked at me oddly, a deserved reaction because of my earlier behavior. I waved my cell phone in reply as if I had simply retrieved it from the car and returned. I could only hope she didn’t notice how much time had passed. With a plan in motion, I didn’t need to attract any unwanted attention.

  Shelby sat in the same position as she had when I left. I made a wide berth as I crossed the room, hoping to attraction her attention without startling her. Her eyes were open but not focused on me or, as best I could tell, anything else. I approached slowly, praying my old Shelby might be in there somewhere, but she didn’t give me any indication she even knew I was there. I used my softest voice to ask, “Have you had a good day?”

  She shifted her head to look at me with her foggy eyes. Her hand shook as she rubbed the side of her face. She blinked twice and focused on me, but no light sparkled. “Same as the others, I guess.”

  No recognition was in her voice, so I had to fish to determine where I stood. What year was she living in? Did she recognize me? Did she think I was a friend or foe? Or were we off in some far galaxy that I would never comprehend? I had to keep my questions general until I figured things out. “Looking forward to dinner?”

  Ever so slowly, the corners of her mouth turned up into the first smile of the night. Her eyes began to twinkle. “Oh, yes.”

  That reaction gave me some hope. I didn’t know if the improvement was caused by my presence, the hint of coming food, or some thought I couldn’t see. I was happy to have recovered my car for the next time she was well enough to go outside, but tonight wasn’t the night. My goal became simple—a quiet meal together as strangers, friends, or spouses. Anything else was a bonus. “May I have the pleasure of dining with you?”

  She clasped her hands together and giggled like a schoolgirl. “So formal. Such a gentleman. Such manners you have.” We had both shared a love of reading in our early days of dating, delighted to discover we were closet bookworms in high school. In my case, I was too small to excel in the popular sports of football and basketball, but I could escape into a story while my friends banged into each other on fields and courts. She was a popular cheerleader and student, which for some long-forgotten reason known only to teenagers meant she couldn’t expose too much of her love of literature. Those uncovered secrets led to many of our conversations being in stilted, formal English. It was one of our private jokes.

  “It would be my pleasure.”

  She blushed and fanned herself with her hand. With a polite and proper voice, she rejected me. “Some other night, perhaps, but not tonight.”

  My heart skipped a beat. These things happened. If only I could figure out what role I was playing, I had a chance for a pleasant evening. I pushed a little more. “Of course, a beautiful woman like you has plans for the evening.”

  “Oh, I do.” She smiled. “He’s going to join me tonight.”

  My heart pounded. The “he” could mean me. Sometimes she didn’t recognize that I was me. She’d once even told me she had a husband who looked and sounded just like me. Another punch from dementia I just had to absorb.

  Of course, “he” could also mean someone else entirely. Because I came every night at dinnertime, I knew no one else ever joined her for the meal in a real sense. But in the fog that was her mind, many others could be here. The only thing I could do was play the role of a gentleman, something I hoped I was, and wait until I understood the situation better. “I’m certainly disappointed, but I would never get in the way of a gentleman caller.”

  She leaned forward and wrapped her hand around mine. I tingled at the touch as she dropped her voice to a whisper, barely audible over the background noise in the cavernous room. “You are such a nice man, but so is he. So handsome. Treats me like a lady. He makes me feel so special.”

  Caring for someone with dementia was like walking across a minefield. You knew there were things hidden in your path, waiting to hurt you if you stumbled across them. Your only option was to keep moving forward, hoping to make it across the space safely. Then you got to do it all over again the next day. And the day after. I could only play along. If it turned out to be me she was waiting on, I would excuse myself, walk around the room, and hope she recognized me when I approached again. And if it wasn’t me… Well, that was pain I just had to accept.

  “He sounds wonderful.”

  “Oh, he is. In more ways than one.” She fanned herself again, an exaggerated gesture accompanied by a look of delight. “That man is something else in bed too.”

  I gulped, struggling to keep calm. “How…” I licked my lips, focusing on my words. “Nice.”

  “Nice?” She cackled. “My husband is nice.”

  Dread filled the pit of my stomach. “Yes, he is.”

  “But we mustn’t let my husband know about Horace. Horace rocks my world.”

  The affair had broken my heart. Even though it had been over for many years, its memory had a way of surfacing again and again. I didn’t blame her for reminding me of it. I blamed that blasted disease.

  Back when it happened, I didn’t blame her either. I blamed myself.

  21

  We didn’t worry when Shelby failed to get pregnant right after our wedding. We were having too much fun. With plans to fill that big old house with the laughter of as many children as we could, we made love in every single room. Most of them multiple times. We even did it on the porch at night a few times, which makes my chastising Wyatt for walking around in his boxers a bit amusing. If I had had the hammock back then, we would probably have done it there.

 

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