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Realization dawned over his dark features. “Hall and Oates. Like the eighties pop duo?”
I swirled a finger in the air as a classic, upbeat Hall and Oates song flowed softly from the kitchen speaker. “Thinkin’ on my feet here.”
With a nod and not another word, Duke sailed out the back exit. The door slammed and I stared after it.
What the hell was that?
A crash at the front of the bakery shook me out of my stupor. “Sylvie! We need some help up here!” Rebecca called.
“Coming!” I lifted my shirt at the collar to drag in some air, wondering why it was suddenly so freaking hot back there.
TWO
DUKE
The driveto Haven Pines was one I could do in my sleep. The fact my dad’s early-onset dementia had gotten unmanageable and required him to live in the memory care wing of a retirement home was a constant lance beneath my ribs.
With my siblings gone in the wind, Aunt Tootie and I did our best to care for him, but with the demands on the farm, it eventually had gotten to be too much. It felt like yesterday that I had spent a long afternoon in the field, only to end my day with a call from the police that Dad had wandered to town, gotten confused, and been picked up. Irate and confused, he’d taken a swing at the officer trying to help him.
I’d failed him.
Tootie couldn’t care for her brother on her own, and it wasn’t long after that I was forced to admit defeat. Dad was safer at Haven Pines.
Walking through the automatic doors, I was immediately greeted by the nurse at the main desk. “Afternoon, Duke!”
I offered a terse nod and continued around the main desk toward the wing that housed my father. The memory care ward had a separate nurse’s station in front of the locked doubledoors. It was designed for the residents’ safety but bore a striking resemblance to a prison.
The nurse was on the phone but offered me a bright smile and buzzed me in without having to question who I was. As a regular visitor I saw my dad nearly every day. If I couldn’t make it, Tootie or one of my siblings would make the trip to Haven Pines to check in on him. On the good days, we’d even take Dad with us for a family dinner or a scoop of his favorite ice cream downtown.
Immediately through the doors, the decor changed from sterile old folks’ home to a faux neighborhood. When the wing was built, they had modeled it after downtown Outtatowner. The hospital rooms were set up to look like a neighborhood of houses stacked like dominos, one after the other. Doors to the rooms were made to look like the front doors to actual homes, and the outsides were landscaped with flowers, faux windows, and lampposts.
It was quaint, if you could forget the fact that most residents were so far gone they couldn’t remember their own first names. I shook the thought from my head as I approached my dad’s room.
In true Red fashion, Dad was dressed and sipping coffee on the makeshift porch outside his room. Despite the fact he no longer needed to, I knew he still woke before the sun. Old farmers were a different breed. Though he was pushing sixty, he still had a full head of hair, combed and styled the same way I’d known it since I was a kid.
His eyes caught my movement, and they locked onto me. There was a flicker of confusion—that half second where he didn’t recognize his own son—and it always gutted me. Then, just as quickly as it came, it was gone, and recognition split his face into a smile. Dad had kind blue eyes, and today they were clear.
He stood and shoved a hand in my direction. “Afternoon.”
I shook his hand and clamped the other onto his shoulder with affection. “Hey, Dad.”
“No work today?”
I huffed a humorless laugh. There wasalwayswork, but Dad was a priority. “Slow day. New bushes are being planted this week and next. We had a few rows affected by shoestring virus.”
Dad’s brows pinched down. “Removed the infected bushes and burned them?”
I nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“You’ll have to watch that spot from now on. Four years at least. How many rows?”
I laughed inwardly. While some memories, like his children or his wife passing, became hazy, the man never forgot a damn thing about blueberries.
“Only two. We’re taking care of it.”
Dad patted my arm. “I know you are, Son.” He gestured to the two chairs on his mock porch. “Have a seat.” He lifted his Styrofoam cup. “Unless you want something to drink. Coffee is like tar today, so I wouldn’t recommend it.” He grimaced into his cup but took another sip.
Shaking my head, I sat next to him, as I had done a thousand times before, and stretched my long legs against the porch railing that butted up to the hallway.
