The Old House (13 page)

“Buddy, look into his room and see if he took his blue sweater. And look on the hooks by the back door, near where we hang the keys. He has a dark blue jacket. See if it's there.”

Both the sweater and the jacket were gone. Buddy stood for a minute in the middle of Grandpa's room, surveying his collection of books, magazines, miniatures of old cars, and bundles and packets, some of them spilling out of their wrappings.

The aunts, she knew, had tried to get him to get rid of some of it. She could see why. It would be impossible to clean, even if he'd allow them past the door. Yet she understood Grandpa's side of it, too.

Here in this room was the entire sum of Grandpa's life. His pictures, his treasures, and his memories had all been condensed into what would fit in this one room. Just as most of what remained in Buddy's life, except for
Bart and Dad, was packed into that garage in the house she'd had to move out of. She hoped that she still would have Dad, when Bart came to get her, but it was easy to imagine how Grandpa felt about what he had left.

He could no longer see these things clearly. Most he would never use again. Yet they had been important to him, for one reason or another, and like his speaking clock, they helped keep him oriented. Except that now, she feared, he was disoriented, lost somewhere, perhaps even sick or hurt. Like Max, she didn't see how he could have completely disappeared in such a small community, where he was known to everyone. She was afraid for him.

She said a little prayer for his safety, and returned to where the others were discussing options, to report, “He took both the sweater and the jacket.”

“Thank the Lord for that,” Cassie said, distress evident on her round face. “I hope we find him before he starves, or something worse.”

“He ate enough for two men at dinner,” Addie said dryly, “so it would take a few days
for him to starve. And if he had another stroke or something, he'll be found sooner or later. He couldn't have gone far.”

“But he might die of a stroke if he doesn't get medical help,” Cassie said.

“He's nearly ninety-two years old. He's expressed a wish to go on to Heaven rather than get any older,” Addie told her sister. “But don't put him in his grave yet. Chances are he sat down to rest or talk to someone. We'll find him.”

Cassie's lips trembled. “But it's dark out, and cold. And it's starting to rain.”

One of the police officers stopped by the house to report that they hadn't found Grandpa, but that they'd keep looking. Some of the neighbors had organized a group to go from house to house over the entire town. Addie and Cassie donned raincoats and hoods, for the rain was falling now in earnest, accompanied by rising winds, and set forth once more. “There's no sense in you two getting wet,” Addie told Buddy and Max. “Gus has gone over to the Hayloft, so answer the phone if it rings. If anyone has any news, call the police and they'll find us and let us know.”

The moment they walked out the door, Max said sourly, “He can't go hunt for Grandpa, but he can go sit with his buddies in the tavern.” He made a rude noise.

Nobody had mentioned supper, but once the others had gone, Buddy asked, “Do you think it would be all right if we had something to eat?”

“Yeah, I'm hungry, too. I hope Grandpa isn't cold and tired and hungry and can't remember how to get home. But it won't help him if we're hungry, too. Come on. I think there was plenty of chicken left over, and cold biscuits, too.”

Nobody called. Nobody came home. They tried to watch TV, but gave it up as a bad job since neither of them could follow a plot. Even the jokes on the sitcom reruns didn't seem funny.

Ten o'clock came, and they should have gone to bed, but neither of them could bring themselves to do it. At five minutes after, they heard the car drive into the side yard, and then the sound of the back door opening.

Both of them were on their feet, moving in that direction, before the aunts could get all the way into the house.

They were alone.

“You didn't find him yet?” Buddy cried, disbelieving.

“No. No sign of him, though Mrs. Eldridge thinks she may have seen him, a man in a dark blue jacket and a baseball cap,” Addie said, shedding her raincoat and letting it drip on the floor as she hung it on one of the hooks. “But that was hours ago.”

“Where did she see him?” Max asked. Buddy could tell he was just as distressed as she was.

“Over by the Hayloft,” Cassie said, sounding very tired. “Of course he wasn't going there. We knew that, but we asked, anyway, just in case. He might have gotten confused and gone looking for Gus, who wasn't there then.”

Gus had cut the old man off at the dinner table, Buddy remembered, when he'd tried to talk about the sermon. Had he thought to chase Gus down and insist on relating the whole thing? Of course Gus had still been home, upstairs taking a nap, when Grandpa left the house. But Grandpa might not have realized that.

Buddy's throat ached. “
What are we going to do, then? Just . . . go to bed, and not look anymore until morning?” The thought of Grandpa wandering around out there in the dark and the wet made her want to cry. What if it was already too late to rescue him?

What if it was already too late to rescue Dad?

Her eyes brimmed, and the ache went down into her throat.

Beside her, Max suddenly exclaimed, “The keys!”

He said it so loudly that Buddy jumped.

“What keys?” Addie asked.

“His keys. The keys to the store. Remember, there was a set that never got turned over to Alf—the spares he kept for emergencies. They used to hang next to the jackets.”

Buddy followed their collective gazes to the little hooks beside the dripping raincoats.

“He took them,” Cassie breathed. “Oh, good grief, do you suppose that's where he went? Back to the store? He hasn't been there since Alf Peterson went bankrupt and they boarded it up.”

Addie was already reaching for her soaked coat to put it back on. “The way his memory is, he might think he was there yesterday. Let's go look! Get a couple of flashlights. The power's been turned off there for ages.”

“We're coming, too,” Max asserted, and when nobody argued, he grabbed his own jacket and thrust another one at Buddy. “Come on!”

The jacket was much too big, but it had a hood, and Buddy wrapped up in it and hurried with the others back out to the detached garage. She piled into the backseat with Max, and Addie started up the car and backed it out to the street.

Buddy remembered the closed store on the main street that was also the state highway. Ostrom Appliances, the store Grandpa had operated for most of his adult life. Alf Peterson hadn't bothered to change the name when he'd bought it.

There was no one on the street at this time of night. They passed the Hayloft, the only building with neon lights still burning, sending vivid colors reflecting off the wet pavement. A
few cars were parked in front and beside it, but the curb was empty in front of the old store building.

Addie cut the engine, and they all bailed out. “He took the only key we have, so I hope if he's here he left the front door unlocked,” she said, and rattled the knob on one of the double doors.

It opened under her hand, and she switched on the big flashlight she carried. “Grandpa? Are you in here?”

There was no response.

Max carried a light, too, and swung it around the big main room, empty except for a long counter and some shelves behind it. The place had an unpleasant, musty smell, like mice.

“Grandpa!” Cassie shouted. “Where are you?”

And then they heard it, the mechanical little voice. “The time is 10:37 p.m.”

“In the office,” Addie said, and they all moved together, the twin globes of light making sweeping motions through the dust and cobwebs.

Grandpa was sitting on the floor beside an
old-fashioned woodstove, hunched over with his arms around his drawn-up knees. He blinked in their lights before they lowered them. “It's cold,” he said. “I couldn't find anything to make a fire with. I always used to keep something to build a fire. Somebody's used it all up.”

“Thank God you're all right,” Cassie said, her voice breaking. “Come on, let us help you up. Can you stand?”

She and Max together got him on his feet, steering him toward the entrance at the front of the building.

“Why didn't anybody leave any kindling?” Grandpa asked. “Somebody's robbed the place. There's not a thing left here. We have to call the police.”

“We will,” Cassie said, “as soon as we get you home.”

But Addie said, “It's not your store anymore, Grandpa. They moved everything out of it a long time ago. What did you do with the keys? I need to lock the door behind us.”

Grandpa produced the keys, and his hands shook. “It's too cold,” he said.

They went out into the night, and the old
man was bundled into the backseat, between Buddy and Max. He was trembling, and Buddy could feel how frail and weak he was against her side.

Thank you, God,
she whispered.
We found him in time.
Now if Bart could just find Dad, too.

Cassie insisted that Grandpa get into a hot bath while she got pajamas and a robe for him. “He's half-frozen,” she said. “You kids, heat some soup for him, will you? Addie, will you call the police and tell them we found him?”

It wasn't until the old man had been warmed and fed and hustled off to bed that Addie exploded. She wasn't loud, but she was upset and very determined. “Cassie, this has got to stop. We can't keep trying to cope with this dementia by ourselves any longer. He's dangerous to himself, and he's dangerous to us.”

Cassie's chin quivered as she stared her sister in the face. “He's our grandfather. We're living in his house. We're going to take care of him as long as he lives, the way we promised Mama and Grandma that we would.”

“Of course we'll see that he's
taken care of.
But not by ourselves. He needs to be where he can't wander away, can'
t attempt to use the stove or the microwave, can't do anything dangerous. We can't watch him every minute here, Cassie. He needs to be in a rest home with professional caretakers who can keep track of him around the clock.”

Cassie's eyes filled with moisture as she spoke with equal firmness. “But there's no such place here in Haysville. If we put him in one of those rest homes, he'd be away from everybody he knows. Even we couldn't see him every day, and if we only visited him once or twice a week, he wouldn't remember from one time to the next. He'd think he'd been abandoned. He wouldn't meet friends at church; people couldn't drop in and see him at home the way they do here.”

“We're not going through another day like this one,” Addie said flatly. “I'm going to talk to Dr. Grant on Monday and see what he recommends. If I have to, I'll get Gordon up here to cast his vote with mine. But you've got to understand that we can't keep him at home any longer. It's not safe. Not for him, and not for us.”

Tears leaked onto Cassie's cheeks. “I'll sleep down here. I'll
watch him more closely, even at night.”

“You're only one person, Cassie. And you have to sleep sometime. Speaking of sleep, you two kids get to bed. You've got school in the morning.”

Behind them, as Buddy and Max headed for the sewing room and the stairs, they heard Cassie's tearful voice, pleading, and Addie's determined one.

Buddy blinked back her own tears as she closed the door behind her and put on her pajamas. Nobody had reminded her to wash her face or brush her teeth, so she decided to skip it until morning. She prayed for Bart, and Dad, and Grandpa, and for herself. She didn't want to go to school in this unfamiliar town. She didn't want to cry, and get her head all plugged up so that she got a headache, but she couldn't help it.

She turned out the light and hugged her pillow—the strange, too-thin pillow that didn't feel anything like the one she'd left behind—wondering if she'd ever go to sleep happy again.

Buddy had changed schools before, a number of times, but never had she dreaded it as much as she did this time.

It had done no good to protest that surely her brother and her father would be coming soon to pick her up, that it was pointless to enroll in a new school for just a few days. It hadn't helped to remind Cassie that no one had gotten to bed until late last night, and that what sleep they'd had hadn't been restful.

It didn't even matter that Grandpa had again been cause for concern at breakfast, when he was despondent and confused and uncooperative. He hadn't wanted to get out of bed, he wanted to know why he wasn't in his old room upstairs, and he insisted that he did not like scrambled eggs, even with sausage.

“But they've
always been your favorite!” Cassie exclaimed, sounding mildly provoked. “I made them special for you today!”

The old man's mouth took on a mutinous pout. “Don't you think I know what I like?” Grandpa demanded, making Cassie roll her eyes. “I don't like scrambled eggs!”

Addie pushed back her own chair. “Well, you two work it out. Let him have cold cereal for once, if that's what he wants. It won't hurt him. Max, you and Buddy better get going. See that she gets to the right classroom and finds her way around. I need to get to work upstairs; I have a chapter almost finished.”

Now it was Max's turn to roll his eyes, and though she was quite apprehensive herself, Buddy took pity on him. “You don't have to take me around like I'm a baby,” she said. “I know where the office is, and they'll tell me where to go, won't they?”

“You'll get Mrs. Hope.” Max made a derisive snorting noise. “Wrong name. They should call her Mrs. Pity-Party.”

Immediately tense, Buddy asked, “Why? What's wrong with her?”