Castaway Cove (6 page)

“Well, again, I’m sorry to have run into you.” Since she was all too aware of the fact that they’d suddenly begun to provide entertainment for a group of residents sitting at a table putting a jigsaw puzzle together, she managed, just barely, to keep the annoyance she was feeling out of her voice. “Have a nice evening.”

With that, Annie squared her shoulders and walked past him, toward the door. For some inexplicable reason she was tempted to look back to see if he was watching her, but she resisted the impulse.

Mac watche
d the woman hold up her pass card to the electronic eye that opened the glass doors. She was tall and slim, but what curves she had were definitely in all the right places. Her hips swayed enticingly in a simply cut sleeveless dress covered with a splash of flowers that reminded him of the garden his mother had so lovingly tended. They also had him thinking of starlight and tangled sheets.

Even as he tried to shake off that distracting thought, he watched her pull the flowered bag down the sidewalk to the parking lot. With a new job, a grandfather sinking deeper into dementia every day, and a daughter who, once she’d realized he really wasn’t going to leave her again, was proving to have a very strong mind of her own, he had no business even thinking about tangling sheets with a woman. Which hadn’t happened in so long, sometimes days would go by before he’d even miss it.

When her pert breasts had pressed against his chest like a wake-up call to his too-long-celibate body, every thought in his head had immediately gone south. He presumed that was why, instead of some clever, casual pickup line, his sex-battered brain had come up with cat insults. More proof that he’d definitely lost his touch. Even some alien landing from Mars would undoubtedly know that most females actually liked cats.

“You could’ve at least gotten her name,” he muttered to himself as he used his coded key to enter the first-level memory care wing, where his grandfather’s room was located. “Asked her out for a drink. Maybe even dinner.”

Or to his bed.

“Don’t go there.” Besides, the invisible wall that had shot up between them after he’d insulted the cat wasn’t all that encouraging. Although he did feel like he owed the cat a thank-you for causing the close encounter with the sexy stranger.

Assuring himself that the sudden jolt of lust was proof that all his guy parts were still in working order, despite the suffocating sense of survivor guilt that had been hanging over his head these past months since the explosion, Mac plastered a smile he was a long way from feeling on his face as he paused at the desk.

“Hey, look at you,” he greeted Analise Peterson, the floor nurse. She was wearing her signature brightly patterned scrubs, which she’d once told him helped keep residents engaged by initiating conversation. Today’s green shirt and pants were printed with—wouldn’t you just know it?—kittens. “You’re tan.”

“Kelli Douchett was right about Hawaii being the best place ever for a honeymoon.” She dimpled prettily. “The beaches were amazing. Including one we stumbled across on Molokai that looked like something out of a movie. It had this one gorgeous stretch with white sand that looked like spun sugar, and amazingly, there was no one there! We could’ve been the only two people on the planet. . . .”

When the new bride’s voice drifted off and her cheeks flushed bright pink, Mac had a very good idea of how they’d spent that stolen private time.

“Well, it’s good to have you back,” he said. “You were missed. . . . So, how’s he doing today?”

“Pretty well,” Analise said, morphing from blushing newlywed to the efficient, caring RN who kept the wing running so smoothly. “The other day’s outing must have energized him. He’s been quite chatty.”

“That’s definitely good news.” One thing Mac had learned about Alzheimer’s was that what might have once been small, mundane things were events to be celebrated.

He reminded himself of that as he walked down the hallway, past the doors with the bulletin boards covered with bright-colored burlap and photos of the residents’ lives in happier, more optimistic times. The boards had begun appearing a few weeks ago and although he understood that it helped staff and visitors personalize the patients, there were times when he found himself wondering if the subjects of all those photographs would have been smiling as brightly if they’d known what was lurking in the hidden shadows of their futures.

Shaking off that depressing thought, he knocked on the door to his grandfather’s room, then walked in.

“Hey, Pops.”

He’d been coming to visit every day since he’d arrived in Shelter Bay eight months ago, and although at first he’d been relieved that his grandfather wasn’t in as rough shape as he’d feared when his father had told him about the illness, there was no way to ignore the fact that there seemed to be less of him than when Mac and Emma had first visited. Despite the good days, the disease was relentless as it slowly stole its victims away. The phrase
the long good-bye
was heartbreakingly accurate.

On the plus side, Mac was learning the power of memories. How stories of the past made people who and what they are. His grandfather was, more and more, living in the moment. Which Mac, wishing he could forget a lot of his own past, had decided did have its pluses.

He’d begun hugging Emma a little tighter when he kissed her good night. Held her hand a little longer before she raced into her kindergarten class. And more and more often he found himself pausing to drink in the amazing, fiery beauty of the sun setting over the ocean, or the shimmering arc of a rainbow after a spring rain.

Or the seductive sway of feminine hips in a flowered dress.

“So.” He turned a straight-backed chair around, sat down, and put his arms on the back rail. “How’re things?”

“Same as they were yesterday,” Charlie grumbled. “And the day before. And the day before that. This place reminds me of the Navy. Everything is scheduled the same. Over and over.”

“Like
Groundhog Day
.”

When his grandfather’s expression revealed not a hint of understanding, although Mac knew he’d seen the movie, he merely shrugged. “It’s a movie where time gets stuck and the same day keeps repeating.”

“Yep. Sounds a lot like here,” Charlie said.

“You went to the aquarium day before yesterday,” Mac reminded him. “And got ice cream.”

Puzzlement drifted across Charlie’s eyes. Eyes that had once sparkled like sunlight on blue water, but were now more tinged with shadows. He tugged on the sleeve of the cardigan he was wearing despite the warmth of the room. At one time he would’ve filled out the shoulders of the blue sweater, but no more. It now swamped him—yet another change. The broad-shouldered, barrel-chested man who’d spent his life hauling in traps and fishing lines was being whittled away.

Mac noticed the scrapbook on the table beside the chair. There were new photos that hadn’t been in it when he’d visited last evening.

“See,” he said, pointing one out. “Here’s you eating ice cream at the seawall.”

The confusion dissipated, like morning fog over the harbor burned away by a summer sun. “Rocky Road.” Charlie nodded with satisfaction, certain of this fact. “It’s always been my favorite.”

“I know.” The disease might be robbing his grandfather of many things, but not of his love of ice cream.

“Annie liked strawberry.” His smile was reminiscent. Wistful. “I always said it was because it was the sweetest. Just like her.” He tilted his head, thinking. “We didn’t have as many flavors in those days. Nothing like now. It’s near impossible to decide what to choose when you just want a damn cone.”

“You’re not alone there, Pops.”

“Annie liked strawberry,” he said again, as if for the first time. He picked up the book and turned the page until he’d come to a photo of Mac’s grandmother, posed on a driftwood log like a 1940s cover model, smiling into the camera. “I always said it was because it was the sweetest. Just like her.”

“That’s a good memory.”

“Yeah. It is.” He paused again, whether lost in that memory, or just lost in the labyrinth of his mind, Mac wasn’t certain. “Your Emma likes strawberry best, too.”

Mac had found it puzzling that the one thing his grandfather was never confused about was Emma. He always talked about her, always remembered what she’d told him, even recalled the names of her friends that she’d chatter about during their visits.

“She does,” Mac agreed. “But I think it’s because it’s pink as much as for the flavor.”

“Probably so. The girl does have a fondness for pink. Annie used to like it, too. Did I ever tell you about the time she surprised me by painting our bedroom?”

“I don’t think so.” He had, several times. But knowing it was one of his grandfather’s favorite memories, Mac didn’t mind hearing it again.

“She painted it bubblegum pink because she thought it’d be more romantic than the beige I’d painted it when I built the addition. Well, when I came home from crab fishing up in Alaska and walked into that room, the first thing that hit my mind was that the guys would never stop ragging me if they knew I had a foo-foo girlie-pink bedroom. But she was so happy about her surprise, I decided that I liked it, too. And it wasn’t as if any of the guys on the boat were ever going to see our bedroom. Plus, she turned out to be right. We did have some fine romantic times in that pink room. . . .

“Mac, you need a wife.”

The change in topic was abrupt and unexpected. Like so many of his conversations with his grandfather these days. Aware that there would come a time when the older man would disappear completely behind the veiled curtain that would cut him off from his friends and family, Mac was grateful whenever Charlie initiated conversation. As Analise had said, this was definitely a chatty day.

“I
had
a wife,” Mac reminded him.

“You did?” Narrowed eyes sharpened as the past tense seemed to sink in. “What happened to her?”

Although they’d been through this numerous times before, Mac settled on the short answer. “She left me. Eight months ago.”

And except for three phone calls to their daughter—one the day after she’d left Colorado Springs, the second on Christmas Day, and the third on Emma’s recent sixth birthday—Mac hadn’t heard a word from her. He had, however, received the divorce papers from her attorney, then the official notice that the State of Arizona had declared their marriage ended.

“Humph. Sounds like she wasn’t the forever-after one . . . your soul mate, like Annie was mine. So maybe you need a new wife.”

“I’m doing okay.”

“So you say. But I’ll bet my great-granddaughter could use a mother. Now, I’m not saying that you and your father aren’t good caretakers,” he said, sounding a great deal like the decisive, outspoken man he’d once been. “But little girls need a woman in their lives. And this is your lucky day, boy, because I’ve got just the woman for you.”

“You do, huh?”

“I do.” His grandfather folded his arms across his chest and nodded. “My nurse.”

Unfortunately, his nurse was Analise, who’d just returned from her honeymoon. Damn. For a while there, they were on a reality roll. One step forward, two back.

“I’ll take that under advisement.” There was no point in reminding his grandfather that his nurse was newly married, since he would undoubtedly forget this conversation by the time Mac reached his truck in the parking lot.

“You do that. Annie—that’d be the nurse—is pretty, smart as a whip, and sweet. She’d make a perfect mother for little Emma. And you could do a helluva lot worse.”

Now he was confusing Analise’s name with that of his late wife.

“Like I said, I’ll keep it in mind,” Mac said, fighting back a long, deep sigh. Then, needing to change the subject, which was getting increasingly depressing, he asked, “Want to watch
Western Angler
? I brought along a DVD.”

Although Mac had never understood the appeal of watching other people fish, apparently a lot of folks, like his grandfather, did. How else to explain a mind-blowing number of more than nine hundred fishing shows available on TV?

“Always up for fishing.”

About five minutes into the show, which was all about fishing on the Clackamas River, his grandfather said, “She’s waiting for me.”

“Grandma?”

“Who else would I be talking about? Of course your grandmother . . . I keep telling her I want to be together again. But she keeps insisting it’s not my time.” He folded his arms and glared at the TV. “She made me wait six damn months after I proposed before she’d marry me so she could plan herself a wedding.”

“Women like weddings.” Kayla had certainly planned one with an attention to detail that had reminded him of the Joint Chiefs orchestrating an invasion.

“Yeah. I figured that out for myself when she had me choosing between chocolate and vanilla wedding cakes.”

“Which did you go with?”

“We split the difference and went with marble. Woman never was on time a day in her life, so I spent a lot of time waiting. Which I never minded, because she was worth it. But dammit, here I am now, stuck in this place, waiting for her again.”

As a fisherman hauled in a fifteen-pound steelhead that had put up one helluva fight, Mac’s grandfather’s words caused a stir of concern. “You’re not thinking about speeding up that timeline, are you?”

The rise in military suicides had made Mac extra vigilant during his days on AFN whenever men and women would call in to his program with personal problems. Now he was attuned to every nuance.

“Of course not,” Charlie huffed, sounding offended that Mac had even asked. “I was just making conversation.”

“Okay. But you’d let someone know if . . . “

“I
said
I was just making conversation. So can you just shut your piehole and let me watch my damn program?”

“Sure.” There was no point in arguing. But Mac did make a note to call his grandfather’s doctor as soon as he left. And to stop again at the desk on the way out and ask Analise Peterson to request that the staff keep an eye out for any signs of depression.

They watched the rest of the thirty-minute program, which proved about twenty minutes longer than his grandfather’s attention span.

After promising to be back tomorrow evening, he was leaving the room when Charlie tried one more time. “You think about my nurse. Not right for a man to be alone. And Annie would be just the right little gal for you.”

“Yes, Pops,” Mac said obediently, even as his mind drifted back to that woman he’d literally bumped into earlier.

She hadn’t been wearing a wedding ring, and yes, he’d noticed, but that didn’t mean that she wasn’t attached.