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She gave me a long look. “Delphine, someday, and I hope it’s not for a while, but someday? You’ll be the child of an aging parent, too. And you’ll find out then that there’s no such thing as a convenient time to take care of all the many, many things you have to take care of when your mother is losing her mind.”
By ten o’clock, I was in the back seat of Adam’s car as it traveled the long curves of the oceanside road. The fog had lifted and the sea stretched away to the south, the water dark and churning. Overhead, the clouds had cracked apart to reveal a thin, pale slice of blue sky. Mimi hadn’t fallen asleep after all; she was alert, riding shotgun nextto Adam, leaning forward to look through the windshield and keeping up a stream of chatter about the drives she used to take. She’d once known a boy with a Cadillac, she said, who would take her all around the island.
“But I was only a girl then,” she said, and twisted in her seat to look at me. “A girl like this girl. How are you, dear?”
I smiled, not bothering to point out that I was a long way from being a teenager, as she’d been during those long-ago summer drives. “Just fine.”
“In those days, we could have sat the three of us up front,” Mimi said. “But this... this...”
“Subaru,” Adam said, and Mimi made a face.
“ThisSubaru,” she said, “they put this thing in it.” She tapped her fingers against the center console.
Adam smiled. “But now there’s a place for your elbow. And your coffee.”
Mimi gave him a sly look. “That’s not what it’s for.”
“It’s not?”
“No,” she said. “It’s not for elbows. It’s a blockade. To stop young people from canoodling.”
“You know,” Adam said, “I think you’re right. But you know what else?”
“What?”
“I bet they find a way to canoodle anyway.”
I watched and grinned as Mimi giggled and Adam winked at me over his shoulder. He was so good at this, at knowing just the right tone to take, gentle and playful but never condescending. Too many people didn’t understand that dementia made a person sick, not stupid. I still remembered the time when the woman doing Mimi’s pedicure had chirped, “And now we’ll paint your little piggy-wiggies,” like she was talking to a toddler, and then looked like she’d been slapped when Mimi plucked the polish right out of her hand, turnedto me, and said, “Dear, would you paint them? This bitch appears to have gone soft in the head.”
I chuckled to myself, and then felt a chill run down my spine as Adam’s eyes briefly met mine in the rearview mirror. Something dark and delicious seemed to flicker there, and I thought,Tonight. Just the one word. Like a promise.
Mimi stayed in high spirits all the way to Northeast Harbor, but when we pulled into the small lot beside the bakery, she suddenly grew moody.
“We’re here!” I said, unbuckling my seat belt.
“Here? Where?” She frowned. “I don’t know this place.”
“The bakery in Northeast Harbor.”
“This isn’t—” She faltered and seemed to shrink in her seat. “No, this isn’t right. You must have gone the wrong way.”
Adam and I exchanged looks. The tremble in Mimi’s voice was a warning; there was no sense in trying to correct her.
“Well, damn, I probably did,” he said, nodding agreeably and keeping his tone light. “It’s so easy to get lost around here, isn’t it? I’m sorry. But hey, since we’re here, maybe we should just take a look inside this place? See what looks good? What do you say, Miss Miriam?”
Mimi gripped her seat belt with both hands. “I won’t,” she said, her voice rising in pitch. “I won’t!”
He rested a hand on her shoulder. “Sure, okay. But I don’t mind telling you, I’m pretty hungry. Maybe you and I can just sit here a minute, and Delphine can go inside and buy some, well, something.”
“I think that’s a great idea,” I said quickly. “I’ll be back before you know it.”
Mimi still clung to the seat belt as if she thought I might try to haul her out of the car, but she nodded. “All right.”
I hurried into the bakery, where a small bell rang above the door and the air was warm, thick with the smell of yeast and cinnamon sugar. There was a glass case lined with pastries to my right, and a chalkboard on the wall where someone had scrawled “CranberryHoliday Cake, $10” in red-and-white-striped letters made to look like candy canes. I saw tall jars filled with cookies, a dozen rustic bread loaves piled up in a pyramid.
I didn’t see Jack Dyer until he was right next to me, standing too close, staring at me with the same scowl that I’d seen in the window earlier. He was close enough that I could smell him—body odor mixed with old smoke—and I stumbled back, hearing my aunt Diana’s voice in my head as I did:Watching you? Like a predator?
No,I thought as I found my footing again. Not like a predator. It wasn’t like that at all, because it was something much stranger. The way Jack Dyer looked at me, it wasn’t like he wanted to do something bad to me. It was more like I had done something bad tohim.
