“Nice to meet you,” I tell them both as she places the tray on the table and sits down in the seat next to her husband.
“You like fruit tea?” she asks, setting a crystal glass in front of me. “This one is made with some apple juice that we make on the farm. And of course, we’ve got some apples.” She gestures to the bowl of fruit on the table—mostly apples with a few peaches and strawberries, drizzled with what looks like honey. “Hope youlike apples, or you might be in the wrong place,” she says with a laugh. It’s deep and husky, just like Stevie’s.
“Love apples,” I say. “Haven’t had fruit tea though.”
Beside me, Stevie reaches for a fork and stabs a peach slice. She asks, “Really? In all the places you’ve been, you’ve never tried fruit tea?”
“You a traveler?” Anthony asks, lifting his glass to his lips.
“Yes, sir. I’m a travel nurse, so I’ve been all over.”
“Wow, can’t say I’ve met one of those. Must get lonely never staying in one place,” he says.
I reach for my own glass and take a sip. The flavors burst on my tongue, ripe and sweet. “This is amazing,” I tell Jamie, and she flashes me a smile. Turning my attention back to Anthony, I say, “It’s not too bad. I like exploring.”
“Stevie does, too,” he says, that note of pride in his voice again.
“I’ve gathered that,” I say. “But she says she hasn’t traveled much.”
He shakes his head, looking a little disappointed. “No, we don’t get much time to travel with running the farm. There’s always something that needs doing.”
There’s a noise coming from the doorway that Jamie came through and when I look, I see an older woman with a remarkable resemblance to Stevie and Anthony. Her hair is gray, but she has their same bone structure and build. She’s a little hunched over, and she seems agitated as she moves into the kitchen and pulls open a drawer.
“What are you looking for, Mom?” Anthony asks, pushing up slowly to his feet. I don’t miss the wince he tries to hide as he straightens his back, or the way he hobbles forward before taking a steadier step.
“My checkbook,” the woman, Stevie’s grandma, says. “I just remembered I need to pay the electric bill, and I can’t find it in my purse.”
Stevie and her mom exchange a look before Jamie stands, too, following after her husband.
“I already paid the electric bill,” Anthony says, voice steady and calm. I get the sense that this isn’t the first time they’ve had conversations like this.
“Why did you pay it?” she asks, spinning around to face her son. Her brow is pinched in confusion and a little irritation.
“It’s my house.”
Stevie’s grandma stares at her son for a long moment before blinking and shaking her head. “Right, of course.” She rubs a spot between her brows, where she has two wrinkles permanently etched there. “I think I just got confused for a moment.”
I look away and catch Stevie’s eye. There’s a sadness in her expression I feel in my gut like a sharp tug.
“Why don’t you come sit down, Susan?” Jamie asks, motioning to the table. “Stevie is here with her friend.”
Susan’s gaze locks on mine for a moment, and she smiles. “We’ve met. Cameron, right?”
“Jack Sullivan,” I say, standing from my seat. “Here, you can have my seat and I’ll squeeze back here.” I motion to the seat wedged in the corner beside Stevie.
Susan glances at her granddaughter, that confusion back on her face. She looks almost childlike with it, and my heart pangs at the sight. I’ve dealt with plenty of Alzheimer’s patients at work, but it never gets any easier watching it.
“I thought your boyfriend’s name was Cameron, Stevie.”
Stevie shakes her head, a small, sad smile on her face. “We broke up in high school. This is my friend, Jack.”
“Oh,” Susan says, lowering into the seat I vacated with the help of her son. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“It’s okay,” Stevie says with a shrug. “How have you been?”
The conversation returns, but all of the levity from before is gone. I can feel the tension rolling off of Stevie and her parents as her grandma chats with us, as they have to correct her and remind her of things. I can tell today must be a bad day, and I wonder how frequently they happen. If they’re happening more and more often.
At one point, Jamie excuses herself from the table and begins to rifle through a cabinet. Stevie watches her with hawk eyes as her mom pulls out an over-the-counter pill bottle and swallows two before returning to the table. Beneath the table, Stevie’s leg bounces, and she picks at a loose piece of skin at her cuticle, hissing when it starts to bleed. At the sound, Susan jerks, knocking over a glass of fruit tea. The sticky liquid spills into Susan’s lap and over the knotted wooden table and seeps into the lace runner, staining it a pinkish brown. Beside me, Anthony shoots up, and then swears under his breath, grabbing onto the back of his chair with one hand for support and holding his back with his other.
