Come Helen High Water

by Susan McBride

  “No,” Betty said weakly, waving them off with a wobbly hand. “I’m perfectly fi—” she got out before her eyelids fluttered like window shades flapping. Then her eyes rolled up into her head, and she began to crumple.

  Despite his paunch, Frank Biddle had reflexes like a cat. Helen heard the sheriff grunt as he rounded his desk and lunged forward, catching the frail-looking woman around her waist just before she fainted dead away.

  Chapter 10

  Betty Winston perched upon a lumpy sofa in the sheriff’s office. She held a cup of water in her trembling hands and tried hard to bring it to her lips. As she sipped, a few drops splattered onto her lime-green pedal pushers. Though she was eighty years old, she felt like a toddler learning to drink from a grown-up glass as water sloshed down her chin.

  Embarrassed, she wiped the dribble away with the back of her hand.

  Calm down, old girl, she told herself. She wasn’t doing anybody any good by behaving like a wilting violet.

  “Here, let me have that.”

  Helen Evans came out of her chair and took the cup away before Betty spilled the whole thing in her lap.

  “Thank you,” she whispered because water wasn’t what she needed to soothe her. She needed Bernie back, safe and sound, locked snugly inside the house, where she could keep an eye on him.

  This shouldn’t be happening.

  None of this should have happened. It wasn’t fair.

  “Take a deep breath, Betts,” Clara said quietly. Her younger sister sat beside her and reached over with a plump hand, gently patting her thigh. “Then tell Sheriff Biddle exactly what you told me.”

  Betty did just that: she drew in a belly-bloating breath and expelled it. Still, she couldn’t get anything past her throat but a sad little sob.

  So the sheriff waded in. He pulled a chair up and leaned forward, his forearms braced on his thighs as he spoke. “You said Bernie’s missing. He didn’t take a car, by chance?”

  Betty shook her head. That one was easy enough. She somehow found her voice to reply, “No, thank God. He doesn’t drive anymore. I hid his keys last year before he killed somebody. I’d like to sell the darned car, but I don’t know who’d buy it.”

  “You should see it,” Clara chimed in. “Betty might end up having to donate it for scrap. Bernie dinged both bumpers and knocked the side mirrors off. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it, what he kept hitting when he was still cruising around. The DMV didn’t care that he had Alzheimer’s,” she insisted. “They let him drive so long as his license hadn’t expired. Betty finally had to take a stand all by herself, and Bernie was not too pleased. He threw tantrums for weeks until he forgot he had a car.”

  Sheriff Biddle listened without flinching. “I sympathize with what you’ve gone through. It’s a no-win situation,” he agreed and turned his focus back to Betty. “So he wandered off on foot?”

  Betty nodded. “Yes, he must have. There’s no other way for him to get around. I try to watch him, but I can’t keep an eye on him every moment.”

  “Of course you can’t,” Clara told her. “You’d have to have eyes in the back of your head for that.”

  “But he’s never wandered so far before that I couldn’t find him,” she said pointedly, and her gaze shifted from the sheriff to Helen Evans. “He mostly sticks close to home except that once when he walked up to Grafton.”

  “Oh, but they all disappear sooner or later, don’t they?” Clara said and patted her hand. “It’s part of the disease, and hardly the worst of it. Well, that’s what the article that I read online said, anyway.”

  Sometimes Betty wanted to tell Clara to hush up. Saying exactly what she thought—no matter how honest—didn’t always make things better.

  “When exactly did you realize he was gone, ma’am?” the sheriff asked.

  “It wasn’t soon enough,” Betty said and cringed, feeling the need to explain so the sheriff didn’t peg her as a bad wife. “We were up early, around six o’clock, so I left him in front of the TV while I started the laundry,” she began, and Frank Biddle nodded, encouraging. “We weren’t planning on going anywhere today. I needed to catch up on the housework, which is why I told Ellen we couldn’t go to the Science Center even though Sawyer has a day off. Besides, it’s hard for Bernie to be on his feet for too long with his new hips. That’s another reason I never imagined he’d take off like he did.”

  “Ellen is your daughter, isn’t she, ma’am?” the sheriff asked, and Betty realized she’d been babbling.

  “Yes, she and her husband live in St. Louis with my granddaughter, Sawyer. I called Ellen when I couldn’t find Bernie.” Betty heard her own voice rattle. “They’re on their way in from the city now.”

  The sheriff cleared his throat. “You said you were doing laundry while Bernie watched television . . .”

  “Oh, yes, I’m sorry,” Betty said, wrinkling her brow. She had lost track and tried to recall where she’d left off. “I’d turned on the rerun of last night’s Cardinals game, because Bernie couldn’t remember who’d won even though we’d watched it the first time. He had his eyes on the TV, like he was taking it in, although I could turn on bowling or golf and it wouldn’t matter. He can even stare at the screen for hours when the TV’s off.” She paused to gnaw her lower lip. “I was up and down to the basement laundry room, and I did some mopping in the kitchen. I heard the noise of the television the whole time. So I don’t know when he slipped out.” She felt her eyes well. “Best I can guess he’s been gone an hour or more. I tried looking for him myself . . .”

  “And when she couldn’t track him down, she called me, and I went right over,” Clara butted in, lacing her steady fingers with Betty’s trembling ones. “I double-checked every room in the house. Then while Betty phoned the neighbors, I walked up and down the street, calling out and knocking on doors. Finally, we got in my car and drove through the whole town and up the River Road to Grafton and back, but we didn’t see him. That’s why we came here.”

  “I’ve got signs all over the house telling Bernie not to open doors or answer phones, but it’s all futile at this point,” Betty pointed out, picking up where her sister left off. “He can’t really read much, and he couldn’t remember our address to save his life. I made a card for his wallet with vital information, but he only carries a few dollars’ cash and no credit cards. I had to do that after he got us into a few financial pickles.”

  She stopped talking, feeling embarrassed.

  “Those things happen,” Helen said, giving her a sympathetic glance. “It’s common for folks to try to take advantage when they realize someone’s mind isn’t really all there.”

  “Yes,” Betty agreed. “It is.”

  “I apologize if this sounds rude, ma’am,” Frank Biddle said and doffed his cap to scratch at the sparse hair across his scalp. “But your husband’s Alzheimer’s is pretty advanced at this point, is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “How far along is it?”

  “He was diagnosed six years ago,” Betty told him, and she felt relieved to say it. “At first it was just misplacing things and forgetting names. But he’s been slipping pretty fast this past year. He says the strangest things. Sometimes it’s hurtful even though I’m sure he doesn’t mean it.” She hesitated, looking at Clara. “It’s like his real memories get confused with fiction.”

  Clara met her eyes, and Betty knew she understood exactly what she meant. Her sister cleared her throat, her grip tightening on Betty’s hand. “I would say Bernie’s in Stage Six.”

  “And how many stages are there, if you don’t mind my asking?” the sheriff asked, cocking his head.

  “Seven,” Clara said solemnly.

  “I see.” Frank Biddle nodded.

  Betty heard pity in those two small words, and it hit her hard in the chest. She closed her eyes as tears stung them, hanging on to her sister’s hand and feeling the same sense of helplessness that had stricken her since Bernie’s diagnosis. Betty had thought surviving
all those miscarriages in the early years of their marriage and the breast cancer a decade ago was hard enough, that nothing else could possibly get to them.

  Then Bernie had his hips replaced, and he’d started acting oddly. Initially she’d figured he was going deaf, as often as he repeated questions or parts of conversation. But his ears had tested fine. Her husband had always been sharp as a tack—he had a master’s degree in civil engineering—so she’d laid the blame on other things: not enough sleep, too much wine, the anesthesia from his hip surgeries.

  She had not wanted to believe it was dementia, not until the day the Grafton police had called Sheriff Biddle when Bernie had taken a stroll up the River Road and couldn’t remember how to get back.

  She had known then what it had meant, even before they’d seen the neurologist and he’d confirmed it. Nothing had been the same since that day. Bernie was still alive, still with her—unlike the husbands of many of River Bend’s resident widows, Helen and Clara among them—but Betty had lost him just the same.

  “Are you all right, Mrs. Winston?” Frank Biddle asked. “Are you sure I can’t fetch Doc Melville?”

  “I don’t need the doctor,” Betty said and forced her chin up to meet the sheriff’s gaze. She didn’t care how her voice shook. “But the answer is no, I’m not all right. I’ve been with Bernie for more than sixty of my eighty years, and there are days he doesn’t even know who I am. Sometimes his eyes stare right through me.” She wiped tears from her cheeks. “His mind can retrieve bits and pieces from the past that he thinks are his present. He’ll tell me he wrenched his knee playing football, which he hasn’t done since high school, or he’ll say that he’s wearing his lucky socks to accept an award for science, which he won in junior high. He tells strangers to call him Win, which his best friend in school used to call him. But I’d never even heard that nickname before. It’s like he’s a different person.”

  Tears surged anew into her eyes, and she blinked hard to fight them off.

  “Alzheimer’s is a terrible thing to go through,” Helen remarked from her chair catty-corner. She sat so attentively: her back ramrod straight, her gray head cocked, and pale eyes narrowed. “Sometimes I think it’s harder on the caregiver than the patient.”

  “It’s devastated the whole family,” Clara added so forcefully that the loose skin beneath her chin quivered.

  Betty sniffed, trying to hold herself together. “The other night he said deer were running down the hallway, when there was nothing there at all. Sometimes before I go to bed, he asks if I have a ride home.” She paused, pinching at the bridge of her nose. “He thinks we’re at a cocktail party, that he lives with his mother, not me. I feel like I’m losing my mind right along with him.”

  A sob hitched itself in Betty’s throat, and she stopped talking. She shook her head, biting down on a trembling lip.

  “It’s okay,” Clara whispered. “You don’t always have to be strong, you know.”

  “Oh, I’m not,” Betty said, and a sad little laugh escaped. “I’m definitely not.”

  Clara squeezed her fingers so hard Betty winced and then her sister’s hold loosened the littlest bit. “I’m always here for you, Betts, whatever you need.”

  “I know.” Betty glanced down, appreciating the sturdiness of her sister’s grip, the way her own thin hand looked so small within Clara’s plump one. How many times through the years had they been there for each other like this? she wondered, knowing it was too many to count. Her life would have been very different without her sister giving up so much for her, she mused, though she was sure Clara would insist it was Betty who’d sacrificed most.

  “You have done all you could,” Clara said pointedly as Betty lifted her head. “Don’t feel guilty for an instant. Most wives would have put their husbands in a nursing home by now. I’m not sure how you do it all without collapsing.”

  “Clara’s right. It’s not your fault,” Helen said, her brow creased with sympathy. “The sheriff will use every means at his disposal to bring Bernie home safely.”

  “I aim to do just that, Mrs. Winston, but I’ll need more information, if you don’t mind,” Frank Biddle remarked, tucking a finger in his collar and tugging. “Can you go home and get me a recent photograph of your husband?”

  “Well, I have one right here, Sheriff.” Betty wiggled her hand free of Clara’s and fished inside her small handbag.

  She’d always carried a picture of Bernie in her wallet. If she were more comfortable with technology, she’d likely have dozens on her phone. Ellen was always scrolling through the latest photos of Sawyer on hers. But it felt so impersonal to Betty. Didn’t anyone ever make prints anymore and put them in frames or in a scrapbook? Betty couldn’t quite grasp the notion of storing an album of photos on a cloud. So far as she was concerned, tech clouds were as nebulous as the white fluff in the sky. A change of weather—or a glitch in the system—and poof, they were gone.

  “Will this do?” she asked and handed the picture to Biddle.

  “Yep, that’ll work,” he said with one quick glance at the photograph. “Let me scan and enlarge it, and we’ll be in business.”

  With a grunt, he got up, walked over to his desk, and fiddled with a piece of equipment that looked like a small copy machine. Tapping a few keys on his computer made the machine began to whir. Over its noise, he asked, “Can you tell me what Bernie was wearing when you last saw him?”

  Betty didn’t have to think very hard to answer that one. “He had on blue jeans, white sneakers, and a pale blue golf shirt.”

  He would have worn the same thing day after day if Betty didn’t take his clothes from his closet and wash them. Bernie didn’t know the difference between dirty and clean and hung everything up at the end of the day just the same. He’d even put damp pants away if he’d had an accident in them, which was becoming more frequent of late. Betty wrinkled her nose, thinking of the smell. Bernie had become a different man from the fastidious man she’d married, though she realized it wasn’t his fault. It was his damned disease.

  “He’ll be home soon, Betts, you’ll see,” Clara said quietly.

  But Betty didn’t just want Bernie to come home. She wanted the old Bernie back, she thought, and tears rolled down her cheeks.

  “You okay to answer a few more questions, ma’am?” Biddle asked.

  Betty brushed a sleeve against her face. “Yes, of course.”

  Still seated as his desk, the sheriff quizzed her about Bernie’s height and weight, and Betty heard the click-clack of his fingers on the keyboard. Within a few minutes, he’d finished whatever he was doing, removed the photograph from the scanner, and brought it back to her.

  “I’ve put out a Silver Alert on your husband. Everyone in the county with a cell phone will get a text message,” he said as Betty slowly rose from the couch. “I’ll get my volunteer deputies on the horn, and we’ll search the town and the woods for Bernie,” he assured her, and Betty hung onto Clara as they headed toward the door.

  “He’s like a child, Sheriff,” Betty said. “He won’t know how to get home on his own.”

  “We won’t stop until we locate him, ma’am, I promise you that.”

  Betty pursed her lips and nodded as Clara walked her out. She wanted desperately to believe everything was going to be fine. But deep inside, she knew it wouldn’t be, not ever again.

  Chapter 11

  The river had risen several feet more in the past week alone, though John Danielson had no intention of postponing his trek into the stretch of woods beyond Springfield Avenue. He’d been planning it since the day he’d been hired by the River Bend town council to take over as director of the Historical Society. Once he’d read through Luann Dupree’s notes about Lerner’s cabin with accompanying photographs, he knew he had to see it for himself.

  The simple log cabin took two weeks to build, and while he worked on it, Jacques Lerner lived in a wigwam procured from a friendly member of a local tribe. Lerner did most of the work on the cabin h
imself, though he did have help in order to make the cabin larger than he would have been able to do on his own. His assistance came from random transients with whom he conducted business, both settlers living in the Mississippi River Valley and the Native Americans who’d preceded them. When the cabin was finished, Lerner was said to have thrown a party that lasted a week, at least according to a newspaper article from 1805 that suggested explorer Meriwether Lewis attended the festivities (although since the guests were purportedly drinking home-brewed elderberry wine, among other Native concoctions, this sighting of Meriwether Lewis may well be an exaggeration).

  Perusing the description of the cabin and its connection to Meriwether Lewis and William Clark had given John goose bumps. He felt the hair on his arms prickle even now.

  He thought suddenly of a snippet from a journal entry by Clark before the expedition that had been printed out and tacked up on the board behind the Historical Society director’s desk.

  We all believe that we are about to enter on the most perilous and difficult part of our voyage, yet I see no one repining; all appear ready to meet those difficulties which await us with resolution and becoming fortitude.

  John puffed out his chest, feeling some of that fortitude ebbing through him.

  After cutting through the cul-de-sac where Springfield ended, he hiked toward the creek, walking parallel to the stream through the tangle of shrubs and trees. He would have followed the creek bed itself, which Luann’s notes mentioned usually ran dry, except the stream had swollen over its banks, forcing John deeper into the thicket.

  If truth be told, the flooded path merely added an element of danger that made his heart race. He felt like a long-ago explorer, looking for a lost city or pirate booty or the Fountain of Youth. Though his sights weren’t set on any of the above but on the old log cabin built by French fur trader Jacques Lerner. According to the letters and diary entries that were part of the Historical Society archives, Lerner had purportedly left gold or other treasure buried thereabouts. The idea of finding that treasure made John’s heart race, as well.