The Color of Destiny (The Color of Heaven Series Book 2) (14 page)

I chuckled. “Damn straight.”

While Elizabeth washed the popcorn bowl, I stood quietly, admiring her profile under the bright halogen sink lights. She was an attractive woman with a tiny upturned nose and expressive eyes. She kind of reminded me of Nicole Kidman, except for the cropped black hair. And she was not as tall. Elizabeth was very petite.

She had such an inherent kindness about her, and a sense of calm and optimism that I respected and appreciated. “You remind me of my mom sometimes,” I said, out of the blue.

Her lips curled into a barely discernible smile, as if she were touched by the comment. Then she looked at me with those caring eyes. “You must miss her a lot.”

“I do. She was an amazing woman and a superstar as a mother. I always felt loved, as if I were the most important thing in the world to her.”

“I’m sure you were.” She handed me the popcorn bowl, and I dried it while she washed the cutlery we had used. “What about your real father?” she asked. “How old were you when––”

“I never really knew him,” I explained. “He died when I was less than a year old. What about you? Are you close to your parents?”

She pulled the stopper in the sink to let the water drain. “I was closer to my mom than my dad. He was too...” She paused. “Strict. We certainly had our differences. He just didn’t agree with some of the choices I made in my youth. I ended up rebelling. Then, in my twenties, I didn’t speak to either of my parents for almost five years. Then Mom got sick. Kind of like your mom.”

“Was it breast cancer?” I asked with concern.

“Ovarian. She passed away ten years ago.”

“I’m sorry.”

Elizabeth nodded appreciatively.

I was hesitant to ask any more questions, because I sensed from the start that Elizabeth didn’t enjoy sharing information about her personal life, especially her youth. Something told me she wasn’t proud of her past. I was curious about her, however. I wanted to know everything—every last intimate detail.

“What about your dad?” I dared to ask while she wiped the top of the island with the dishcloth. “Are you close to him now?”

She shrugged. “I wouldn’t say ‘close.’ We do keep in touch. Occasionally. Maybe once a year.”

I leaned against the counter. “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

“No, it’s just me.” She folded the dishcloth and placed it on the back corner of the sink.

A quiet knock rapped at the door. I glanced at the clock on the microwave.

“It’s midnight,” I said. “That must be Justin.”

Elizabeth grabbed her sweater and picked up her purse while I went to answer the door.

“Hi, Justin. Come on in,” I said.

Unlike Elizabeth, he wore a white uniform that made him look every inch the hospital worker.

“How was the movie?” he asked as he stepped inside.

I closed the door behind him. “It was great.”

“Hi, Justin,” Elizabeth said. “I’m just on my way out. Have a good night.”

She waved at me and was gone before I had a chance to say anything other than, “See you tomorrow.”

Later, when I slipped between the cool sheets in my bed, I couldn’t stop thinking about our conversation in the kitchen, and what she’d said about the choices she had made in her youth, which caused her to become estranged from her parents for five years.

What were those choices? I wondered. And what sort of life had she lived before coming to work with us?

Then I thought about Ryan and the choices
he
had made in his youth. He had never hidden any of that from me. As soon as I was old enough to understand—and a few of my classmates began experimenting with drugs and alcohol—he told me about his childhood and his difficult adolescence, and spared none of the more tragic details, including what happened to his friends.

I must have been twelve or thirteen at the time, and I always admired how he’d managed to turn his life around, when it could have been so different from what it is now.

I was thankful he ended up with us. Thankful for that spider in my ear. Thankful for the corn bin at the grocery store.

Tonight, I told Elizabeth that she reminded me of my mother, and it was true, in many ways. But the more I thought about the difficult adolescence she had described, the more I realized she had much more in common with Ryan.

Chapter Forty-six

The month of July passed in a full bloom of pink and red roses, yellow-petaled brown-eyed Susans, and a collage of other flowers that painted our yard in vivid splashes of color. Elizabeth said that when she and Gram sat on the back deck, sipping iced tea on sunny afternoons, she imagined the gardens were the foreground in a Monet painting, and the sailboats in the distance on the choppy blue bay were joyful brush strokes of whimsy.

I asked if she was interested in using Ryan’s boat, but she said boating was not something she would attempt alone. I suggested she invite some friends down to visit some weekend, but since she had agreed to be on call for us, she said she preferred to be on land and available, just in case.

As for Gram, she painted hundreds of beach stones that summer. As August drew to a close, just before I returned to school, we decided to hold a yard sale on a Saturday, sell most of them for five dollars each, and donate the entire proceeds to our favorite charity—the IWK Children’s Hospital in Halifax.

I spread the word in town and stapled posters to telephone poles. I also sent an email to
The Chronicle Herald
, and a reporter showed up the morning of the sale to do a story on Gram. Ryan barbequed hot dogs that we sold for a buck each. We raised just over two thousand dollars.

When Labor Day weekend rolled around, I was eager to get back to my studies and my friends at school, but uneasy about leaving Ryan, Gram, and Elizabeth, because if the summer had taught me anything—it was that life was precious, and family, even more so. It was not going to be easy to say good-bye, and I dreaded what changes might take place while I was gone.

o0o

On my last night at home, we decided to barbeque my favorite: filet steaks rubbed with sea salt, potato salad with mustard and diced celery, roasted red peppers, and steamed asparagus with butter.

Gram handled the potato salad—it was her specialty—while I took care of the other vegetables. Ryan, as always, was master of the barbeque.

We invited Elizabeth to join us, and she arrived wearing a white sundress I’d never seen on her before, and a pair of turquoise Roman sandals—a noticeable change from the worn-out combat boots she always wore. Her toenails were painted pale pink.

Aside from the outfit, there was something else different about her, but at first I wasn’t quite sure what it was.

“I brought you a key lime pie,” she said, raising it up when I greeted her at the door.

I felt my face light up. “How wonderful! Thank you. Allow me to take it out of your hands. I
love
key lime pie. Come on in. We’re just finishing up the potato salad, and Ryan’s out on the deck scraping the grill and listening to reggae music. I think he needs someone to talk to. Would you like a glass of wine or beer?”

“Iced tea would be great, if you have it,” she replied.

“I’ll bring it out to you.”

She kissed Gram on the cheek, snuck a stick of celery from the cutting board, and pushed the sliding glass door open. Stepping out onto the deck, she said hello to Ryan, and slid the door closed behind her.

After I delivered Elizabeth’s iced tea to her and gave Ryan a refill as well, Gram and I continued to work on the salad and veggies. Every once in a while, I glanced out the windows. Ryan and Elizabeth were chatting comfortably with each other, and I wished I could be a fly on the cedar shakes out there, and listen to their conversation.

“They’re such a nice couple,” Gram said.

I turned my gaze to her. “Yes, they are, aren’t they?” It was the first time either of us had ever suggested anything like that so openly, though I can’t deny I’d thought about it more than once over the summer.

“How long have they been married?” Gram asked.

I stopped what I was doing and set down my paring knife. Without answering the question, I watched her for a moment. She was staring dreamily out the windows.

“Gram?” I said. “How are you feeling?”

Her eyes turned to me, but there was something vacant in them. “I’m fine, dear,” she replied.

She had never called me ‘dear’ in my entire life. At least not that I could remember.

I picked up my paring knife and continued hollowing out the red peppers but I kept an eye on her.

“Do they have children?” she asked, and I looked up again.

“Who?”

“The couple on the deck.”

My heart started to race, and I swallowed uneasily. “No, Gram, they don’t.”

“What a shame,” she said. “They’re both so nice looking.”

“Yes... they are,” I replied, choosing not to correct her while I finished preparing the red peppers to slide into the oven.

o0o

It was an exceptionally warm evening for September. There was not a single breath of wind, so we ate at the table on the deck. Gram returned to her normal self and no longer seemed confused about Ryan and Elizabeth. She talked about how much she was going to miss me when I returned to school, and the only evidence of her memory loss occurred when she started to sing “Yellow Submarine,” and stopped after the first few bars.

“I can’t remember the next line,” she said, then she leaned back in her chair and swirled her index finger next to her ear. “Big surprise! It’s a miracle I didn’t put rocks in the salad!”

We all laughed with her, and I was thankful she could keep a sense of humor through all this. That would take her—and all of us—a long way in the coming months.

Suddenly, as I thought about the future, it felt as if the clouds were whizzing by, the hands on the clocks were spinning around like whirligigs, and the crickets were chirping at double time.

I wanted to shout at the planet, order it to stop turning. I wanted the rivers to cease flowing... for everything to grind to a halt and remain just as it was.

None of that was possible, I knew, because tomorrow I would leave, and Gram would be different when I returned.

Chapter Forty-seven

After dinner, Elizabeth’s car wouldn’t start. Ryan tried to give her a boost but he couldn’t get the engine to turn over.

“It’s probably the alternator,” he said, lifting his head from under the hood and coiling the booster cables around his arm. He placed them in the back of his Jeep, then lowered both hoods. “I’ll call Jimmy in the morning. I’m sure he won’t mind coming by.”

“Who’s Jimmy?” Elizabeth asked.

“The best mechanic in town,” Ryan replied, rubbing his palms over his thighs.

“That would be great. Thank you. But I still need to get home tonight.”

Ryan and I both spoke up at the same time. “I’ll drive you.”

Elizabeth glanced from me to him, then back at me again.

“Why don’t
you
take her,” Ryan said.

“Unless
you
want to,” I replied.

“No, no. You should enjoy one last chance to get behind the wheel, because it’ll be Metro Transit for you for the next eight months.”

I sighed and rolled my eyes, then turned to Elizabeth. “I’ll just grab my purse.”

Inside, Gram was watching television.

“I’m going to run Elizabeth home,” I said. “Her car won’t start.”

“All right, dear,” she replied, and because of her vacant look I wondered if she understood who Elizabeth was. Or who
I
was, for that matter.

“Ryan will be right in.”

She gave no reply, so I went out the front door. Ryan was leaning back against his Jeep with one ankle crossed over the other, and Elizabeth was rubbing a hand over the back of her bare neck and nodding at whatever he was saying.

“Ready?” I asked as I reached them.

Elizabeth touched Ryan briefly on the arm. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Yeah, have a good night,” he casually replied, stepping away from the side of his Jeep and taking the front steps two at a time to the door.

Was that an extra special, jovial spring in his step? I wondered with a small grin as I got into the driver’s seat and inserted the keys in the ignition.

Elizabeth got in beside me and set her purse on the floor. “Ryan said you were in need of a fridge for your dorm room. I have one I’m not using if you want it. We can pick it up now.”

“That would be great. Thanks.” I backed out of the driveway and headed into town. “Actually, I’m glad to have this time with you. I wanted to tell you about something that happened with Gram tonight, while you and Ryan were on the deck.”

I explained how Gram mentioned what a nice couple they made and asked how long they were married, and if they had children.

“Oh dear,” Elizabeth said.

“Yeah, it kind of caught me off guard. It’s the first time she’s ever done that—not recognized one of us.”

Elizabeth was quiet for a moment. “I think this is the biggest challenge most people face when a family member gets Alzheimer’s. It’s hard not to take it personally when they don’t remember you or even recognize you. But you have to remember that she does love you and she always has.”