AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I shook my head. “You lied to her. You tricked her.”
“No I didn’t. Delphine, I didn’t need to. I just needed to help her remember. And show her the visitor logs and your name in there every single day. Even the lawyer didn’t ask questions after he saw that.”
“I don’t believe that. The lawyer? He must have wondered—”
“Why would he? There was nothing suspicious about it. She wasn’t leaving her money tome. I was just a random employee, totally uninvolved, saying oh yes, Miss Miriam had spent all week talking about changing her will, that she wanted to leave her entire fortune to her devoted granddaughter.”
I swallowed hard. “But I wasn’t devoted. Half the time I went to Willowcrest, it was because I wanted to seeyou. Or because I just didn’t want to be here.”
“Do you think that mattered to her? She didn’t care why you werethere, just that you were. You played the part she needed you to play.” He paused. “And so did I.”
“That’s not the same thing. We’re not the same.”
“Sure we are. There’s a reason she never told you the truth, you know. About what he did and what she did. About how he really died. She wanted to forget. She wanted a different story. I just helped her tell it. I made it real. I was the only one who could.”
I thought of my mother, the desperation in her voice as she begged Richard to just tell Mimi that her husband was out and would be home soon.When she doesn’t remember and you tell her that he’s dead, it breaks her heart just like she was losing him for the first time.
“When did you start pretending to be him?” I asked quietly.
“It wasn’t like that,” he said. “Not the whole time. At first it was part of the job. The residents get confused, they think you’re someone else, sometimes it’s easier to just play along. But when I saw how much it calmed her down, yeah, I encouraged her. It wasn’t hard. She still had really powerful sense memories, like if I played old songs or touched her hair a certain way. And smells, too—”
“My grandfather smoked a pipe.”
“Exactly. So I got a little bag of tobacco and kept it in my pocket, or sometimes I’d put it under her pillow. It worked great. It’s just, when I came back here for the holiday, it was like a switch flipped. She started getting clingy. Jealous. I think she could tell I was distracted, you know, because of you. And being back here in the house where all those things happened, it wasn’t good for her. I had to do so much just to keep her from flipping out.”
My stomach clenched. “So much. Like what you’re doing in that picture.”
He winced, and I did, too, remembering that dreamy look on Mimi’s face that day at the bakery. At the time, I’d thought that whatever happened to make her look like that, it must have been good, magical. Now that I knew, I thought I might be sick. All thosenights when Mimi had paced the room, talking to someone I thought wasn’t there. All those long days when he sat with her, walked with her, holding her by the arm. I thought of the necklace and the thumbprint bruise on her neck. Not a mark made in anger, but something else. Something worse.
I thought of the smugness in Richard’s voice:At night, in an old house like that? Sound carries.
“You were in her room at night,” I said. “That was you in the hallway, coming out of the staircase. Jesus Christ.You were in her room.Did you... did you—”
He looked disgusted. “No! It wasn’t like that. I mean, it wasn’t likethat.We just, you know, kissed and stuff, and sometimes I’d hold her until she went to sleep. You don’t understand, I had to. Or she would’ve gone all over looking for me. Like that day when she got lost.”
I thought of the look on Mimi’s face when she’d seen us together on the sofa, and then again, moments later, when I found them together in the foyer. The smile on her face as she turned to me:Have you met my husband?I had been so panicked about being caught with Adam that her meaning had slipped right past me. She wasn’t asking if I knew her husband; she was asking if I’d beenintroducedto him, the man standing next to her.
He’s explained everything,she said.
My breath caught in my throat. “And then you killed her,” I said.
“Ihelpedher,” he said fiercely. “She was dying, Delphine. When she went back to Willowcrest after Christmas, she was going into memory care. Do you know what that means?”
“It means she had more time.”
He shook his head. “More time, sure. More time to ruin everything. Memory care is the last stop before they die, and the people they were are long gone. It’s just bodies walking around. They lash out, they shit themselves, they say horrible things to everyone who tries to help them, and they don’t remember any of it, but you do. That’s how it works at the end. When they’re done forgetting everything, they ruinyourmemories, too. Don’t tell me that’s what you wanted. I know it’s not. Jesus, your whole family practically begged me to do what I did.”
I stayed silent, and Adam started talking again. Faster now, his eyes glittering. “Do you know, on her clear days, she said she wished she could die just so she could see him again? Just so she could say she was sorry? All she wanted was to be with him at the end. I gave that to her. I gave him back to her.”
“But it wasn’t real,” I said.
“It was real to her.”
I thought of the way he’d laid his hand against her face in that photograph. Tender. Gentle. Something made of ice moved horribly in the pit of my stomach.
“Shelly, she knew what you were doing. She was trying to warn us. Tasha said her death was an accident. She said she choked.” I hesitated. “Was it an accident, Adam?”
“You should think about what you’re asking me,” he said quietly. “You’re the one who told me she was there that day, Delphine. That’s how I knew she knew. And you’re the one who wanted to talk to her about Miriam. So think about it. If it wasn’t an accident, think about whose fault that was. Do you really want to know? Because I’ll tell you. I won’t lie.”
