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“I am Theo’s wife. He sometimes confuses my name with someone else from his past.” She paused. “His first love was Clara.”
Oh, Jesus. Where was a giant sinkhole when you needed it? Right about now, I wanted the Earth to open up and swallow me. I felt like a complete jerk.
The nurse who had drawn everyone’s blood today walked in. “Theodore, it’s time for your meds. You want me to bring them in here?”
Mrs. Mills, whose name was apparently Mary, looked down at her husband. “Do you want to rest for a little while before you have dinner?”
He nodded. “Yeah, that sounds good. Okay.”
The nurse came over to help Theodore up.
“Thank you for today,” I said. “It was a pleasure meeting you. I’ll see you again soon.”
“You got him, Patti?” Mrs. Mills asked. “I’d like to stay and speak to Ms. Ellison for a few minutes, if that’s okay?”
“Sure, take your time,” the nurse said.
Once we were alone, I closed my eyes. “I am so sorry for calling you the wrong name.”
She smiled. “It’s fine. No big deal at all. He calls me Clara quite a bit lately.” She motioned to the couch. “Why don’t we sit for a few minutes? I can fill you in on some of the things that are going on with Theo.”
“Sure, that would be great.”
Once we were seated, Mary sighed. “Theo and Clara met sixty years ago, when they were just sixteen. She was the love of his life back then, but eighteen months into their courtship, Clara’s father lost his job, and they had to move two-thousand miles away. They wrote letters back and forth for several years after that and had planned to run away together when they were both twenty-one. Theo and I met in college and had become good friends. Well, at least he considered me a good friend. I had a giant crush on the man.” She smiled reflectively. “He was always a charmer. Anyway, one night we were at a party. We both had a little too much to drink, and one thing led to another. I wound up pregnant. I knew Theodore was in love with Clara, but he insisted that he loved me, too, and we needed to get married. He’s a good man. And he’s been a good father and husband for the last fifty-five years, but his torch for Clara never really extinguished. My husband’s mind is going. Some days he can’t remember me, but he never forgets his Clara.”
I had no idea what to say, but I hated that I’d dredged all of this up for her. “I’m so sorry.”
She squeezed my hand. “There’s no need to be sorry. I’m not telling you to make you feel bad. I thought it was important for you to know how his mind works and what state he’s in. It’s easy to think a lot of these people in here are of sound mind when you talk to them, and sometimes they are. But it’s often difficult to ascertain when their mind isn’t as sharp as you might think.”
I nodded. “I appreciate you letting me know. You’re right. I had no idea Theo and I were talking about someone from so long ago in his past. And properly measuring the stage of his disease is key to obtaining the right results in my study.”
Mary smiled. “Well, next time you visit, if he talks about Clara again, he might actually mean current times. I’ve invited Clara to come visit Theo. I want him to be happy while he can still remember how to be happy, so I thought the two of them might like to spend some time reminiscing.”
“Wow.” I shook my head. “That’s…very generous of you.”
“It’s the least I can do after the many years of generosity Theo has given me.” Her eyes welled up. “Sometimes I feel like I robbed him of something irreplaceable. I assumed their connection had been extinguished long ago. But this disease has taught me a lot about love. True love doesn’t extinguish when people are separated. True love is when people are separated and your feelings never extinguish.” She wiped her cheeks and stood. “I better go make sure Theo isn’t giving the nurse a hard time about taking his meds. It was lovely to meet you, Ms. Ellison, and I wish you the best of luck in your research. God knows we need a cure for this terrible disease.”
“Thank you, and please call me Laney. It was very nice to meet both you and your husband.”
After that, my mood could best be described as melancholy for the rest of the day. I couldn’t stop thinking about whether maybe Holden was my Clara. It sounded like Theo and Mary had had a wonderful life together, but there was something tragic about their story, too. I knew I could be happy with Warren. We’d live a very pleasant life together. But was that enough to wipe away the lingering questions about my feelings toward Holden? Or would I still be thinking about what might’ve been when I was Theo’s age? It was a lot to consider, and it weighed heavy in my heart for the rest of the afternoon—at least until Holden arrived. He strolled in and smiled, and my pathetic heavy heart took off in a gallop.
