I Left Him by Text, and He Kept Paying for My Father's Care novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Sundays

Eli carries the chair up the icy ramp, Willa lets slip that they have visited every Sunday for two years, and the director hands Hannah a notice that only the fund can approve.

"Tell her what, Martin?" Eli asked.

My father's eyes slid off his face and onto the sky.

"Cold," Dad said. "Is it cold?"

The clear hour was gone.

It left the way it always did, with no warning.

Eli stayed on one knee a moment longer with his hand on my father's sleeve.

Then he picked up the grocery bag and stood.

"I'll take him in," he said.

"I've got him."

"The ramp is iced over. You'll never get the chair up it alone."

"I've done it every weeknight for two years."

I hadn't meant to say that last part.

Eli looked at me.

"I know," he said.

I didn't ask how he knew.

The fireworks were still going, ending now in a long run of white bursts over the river.

Nobody was watching them.

I took the right handle of the chair, and Eli took the left.

His hand landed on the grip an inch from mine.

Neither of us moved over.

His knuckles were red from the cold, and there was a new burn mark on the back of his wrist, a pale oval, healing.

I looked at it for longer than I should have.

Then we pushed, and the wheels crunched up the ice, and Dad said, "Easy, easy," in the voice he used to use on a crane operator.

Inside, the lobby smelled of floor wax and lemon tea.

A paper banner over the desk said HAPPY NEW YEAR in glitter.

The night nurse took the blanket from my arms.

"I'll get him settled, hon. Take a minute."

She wheeled Dad toward the east hall.

He turned in the chair and waved at Eli over his shoulder.

"Sunday," Dad called. "Bring the checkers."

"I will," Eli called back.

I turned on him.

"Sunday?"

"Hannah."

"He said Sunday. He said bring the checkers."

Willa had come in behind us, rubbing her hands, and now she looked from his face to mine.

"We come on Sundays," she said. "Both of us. Since the first spring."

"Willa," Eli said.

"What? She's his daughter."

"We come on Sundays," Willa said again, to me, kindly and quickly. "I read to him. Eli does the shaving and the checkers. It was never a secret. You just always come on weeknights."

I counted it in my head.

Two springs, two summers, two autumns.

A hundred and some Sundays.

I had worked the weekend pharmacy shift for a year and a half because the pay was better.

I had never once been in this building on a Sunday.

"Nobody told me," I said.

"You told me not to contact you," Eli said. "I didn't."

"You blocked me."

"After the text."

"Within the hour."

"Yes."

He said it flatly.

He didn't apologize, and I didn't either.

The lobby clock said twelve-twenty.

We stood three feet apart in a hallway with a glitter banner, being very polite to each other in ruined voices.

"Why are you here?" I asked. "Really."

His eyes went to the east hall.

"Your father taught me to hang drywall when I was seventeen. He taught me that a board goes up with two people or it breaks."

"That was a long time ago."

"It was."

"And that's your answer."

"It's the one I've got tonight."

The door to the administrator's office opened.

The director of Birchwood came out in a coat, on her way home, and stopped when she saw me.

"Ms. Doyle. I was going to mail this, but you're here."

She handed me a single sheet, folded in thirds.

"It's about your father's room. The staff have been talking since the fall. His wandering is worse. We'd like to move him into the secured wing within thirty days."

"Is that bad?"

"It's safer. It's more supervision, a locked door, one nurse for four residents." She hesitated. "It's also three thousand one hundred dollars more a month."

My stomach dropped.

"I can't pay that."

"You don't have to. The fund covers Mr. Doyle's care. It only has to approve the change in writing." She pressed my arm gently. "Happy New Year, dear."

She left, and the cold air came in behind her and went out again.

I unfolded the page.

Eli had come up on my right without my noticing.

He was reading over my shoulder.

He read it slowly.

His eyes stopped on one word, the one about the fund, and stayed on it a beat too long.

His jaw went hard.

I took it for anger.

I assumed it was anger at me, and at the idea that anything Garvey money touched could be handled so easily by a stranger.

"Your father signs those approvals," I said. "I'll call his office on Monday."

"Don't call."

"Then what?"

"Go to the office in person. Nine o'clock." He put the grocery bag on the desk. "He's there at nine on Mondays."

"I'll go alone."

"I know you will."

He looked down at the sheet in my hands, and then at me.

"I'll be there anyway," Eli said.

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