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My heart cracked in two as Joe continued to stare out the window as if he hadn’t even heard.
Erin gamely knelt beside Tess and smiled up at Joe as she took his other hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Joe. I’m Erin.”
Tess stood up and swiped at her eyes. I moved to her side and rubbed the back of her neck as I pressed a kiss to her temple.
No wonder she got so upset whenever the subject of her dad came up. Seven years, she’d been watching him fade away like this. If that had been my mom slumped in a wheelchair like that, I’d be out of my fucking mind with grief.
Tess slipped her arm around my waist and leaned against me as Erin continued to talk to Joe, telling him about her job and where she grew up. She had a real knack for keeping up a conversation with someone who didn’t give her anything back. I guessed it was a skill she’d picked up from being a teacher.
Turning my head to brush my nose against Tess’s ear, I murmured, “He can hear us, right?”
She nodded. “His hearing is okay, but his language processing isn’t great anymore, so he’s not always able to follow what we’re saying. I think he tunes out sounds that don’t mean anything to him. It’s like traffic noise—after a while you stop paying attention to it.”
As far as I was concerned, Tess was a straight up superwoman for coming here by herself every week. It had to hurt so goddamn much to see her father like this. I was just glad she’d finally let someone else come with her.
No way was I letting her do this alone anymore. From now on, I was coming along every Sunday. I’d get my mom to come sometime too. I knew she’d be willing to do it for Tess, and Tess would probably like having her here. This kind of thing was right up my mom’s alley.
“Is that Harry Caray?” I asked, noticing a familiar voice from my childhood coming from the small boom box on the table.
Tess nodded. “Dad’s a huge Cubs fan. When I was growing up we always used to watch the Saturday and Sunday games together on WGN.”
I looked at her sharply. “I didn’t know that. Why didn’t I know you were a baseball fan?”
She shrugged. “It was only something I did with my dad. As his Alzheimer’s advanced, I noticed that sometimes when there was a baseball game on he’d talk to the TV or stand up and mumble along with the seventh-inning stretch. So I tracked down a bunch of old Cubs radio broadcasts and burned them to an audio CD for him to listen to. It’s about the only thing he seems interested in anymore. Sometimes he’ll even smile or cheer when the Cubs get a run.”
“Too bad that didn’t happen more often,” I said wryly, and Tess smiled.
When Erin finally stood up, brushing the wrinkles out of her pants, Tess tugged me over to Joe.
“Dad, this is my friend Donal Larkin from high school. He used to come over to our house sometimes.” Her lips tugged into a small smile as she looked at me. “He’s the one who almost beat me out for valedictorian. But I owned his ass in the end.”
I squatted down so I was eye level with Tess’s dad, ignoring the way my knees popped. “Hey, Mr. Larkin. It’s good to see you again.”
Nothing. Not even a blink.
I kept going anyway, figuring it was worth it if there was even a small chance anything was getting through to him. “Hey, I hear you and Tess are big Cubbies fans. Me too. You know, my dad used to take me to Wrigley in the summer sometimes when I was a kid. It was pretty much the only thing we ever did together. I’d always make him sit in the bleachers, even though he probably would have preferred nicer seats out of the sun. But nothing beats sitting out there above the ivy, heckling the other team’s outfielders, am I right? We were actually in the bleachers for the Sandberg Game in eighty-four, if you can believe it. I just about peed my pants when Ryno clubbed that second homer off of Sutter.”
Tess’s dad turned and looked at me.
He was staring right at me, focused and present for the first time since we’d entered his room. I swore it almost felt like he recognized me, which was ridiculous. We couldn’t have met more than a few times. No way he’d recognize me and not his own daughter.
His forehead wrinkled like he was trying to remember something, and Tess’s hand squeezed my arm as she crouched down beside me.
“Keep going,” she whispered.
So I did. I rambled on about the 1984 playoffs and then about a few of my favorite players from back then.
Joe’s mouth moved, and he mumbled something that sounded like “Billy.”
I looked at Tess. “Did he say Billy?”
“I think so.” Her eyes were glued to her father’s face.
“Who’s Billy?”
“His younger brother. He died fifteen years ago.”
“Billy,” Joe said again.
