by JoAnn Ross
His expression cleared, just a bit. “Of course you are. You’re the nurse who has the same name as my wife.” His tone didn’t carry quite as much conviction as his words, as he lowered himself back into the chair, but not wanting to cause him any stress, Annie decided to focus on today’s plan rather than get bogged down in names and the fact that she was actually a volunteer, not a nurse.
“I thought we’d work on your scrapbook today,” she said, going over to the dresser where it lay open to a page showing a reprint of the wedding photo that was on the hallway burlap board. “Your wife was very beautiful,” she said.
“Annie was the prettiest girl in Shelter Bay.” He puffed out his chest with husbandly pride. “Let me tell you, she sure turned heads when she walked down the street. . . . Her parents didn’t want her to marry me, you know.”
“No, I didn’t realize that.”
He gave her a long look. “You must not be from here, then,” he said finally. “Because everyone in town knew her parents wanted her to marry Walter Mannington. His family milled nearly all the timber in three counties, which made them about the richest folks on the coast. While I was just a fisherman with a boat owned mostly by the bank.”
Annie pulled up a chair and sat in front of him. “But she chose you.”
“She did.” He chuckled, more to himself than to her. “Mannington was too stuffy. She liked to have a good time. Same as me. Good-Time Charlie, folks used to call me.”
“You’re still a charmer.” She smiled back at him. “A bit like Rhett Butler. But without the mustache.”
“Funny.” The laughter left his eyes as they became slightly unfocused. And shiny. “Annie used to say that. Since she had a thing for Gable in those days, I wasn’t about to point out that I was better-looking.” A deep, rich laugh rumbled up from his chest.
Enjoying the discussion, Annie laughed with him. Of all the residents she worked with, Charlie Buchanan was, hands down, her favorite.
“She made that wedding dress herself,” he said. “Out of a Japanese parachute I sent back home.”
“That’s a parachute?” Unable to stitch a straight line, Annie was more than a little impressed.
“Yup. I found it on one of the islands in the Pacific during the war. I sent it home to her, and since silk was rationed, she used it to make the dress. The veil was mosquito netting.”
“That’s ingenious.”
“She was a clever girl. She worked as a dressmaker for a lot of rich women in town. Including Mrs. Mannington. Walter’s mother. Which is how they met. He lived in a big house, and his boat was a rich guy’s Chris-Craft mahogany runabout that sure as hell didn’t smell of fish, like mine did. And he had himself a red Cadillac convertible, which I never figured made much sense with all the rain we get here. But the girls sure seemed to go for it.” Deep lines furrowed his brow. “Dang guy was used to getting everything he wanted without having to work for it.”
“But he didn’t get the most important thing,” Annie pointed out as she heard the edge of old grievances creep into his tone.
“True enough.” He narrowed his gaze and studied her. “What did you say your name was?”
“Annie. Annie Shepherd. I run Memories on Main. It’s a scrapbook and paper-crafting shop. We made this book together,” she reminded him. As she did every week. “And I brought some more photos of your trip to the Newport aquarium.”
“Why in the blue blazes would I want to go to an aquarium?” he asked. “I spent my life with fish. Don’t need to see any of ’em locked up in fancy glassed-in boxes.”
The trip had been two days ago. Regretting that she hadn’t switched her schedule around to come yesterday, when the outing may have been fresher in his mind, Annie forged ahead.
She ran tape over the back of the photos, inviting him to paste them onto a new page she’d prepared ahead of time, all the while keeping up a nonstop commentary about what she’d been told the group had done when they’d been at the aquarium.
“See,” she said, pointing at the photo of him standing next to a giant Pacific octopus exhibit. “There you are.”
“Seem to be.” He scratched his head. Then frowned. “This dang Alzheimer’s.”
“It’s difficult.” She placed a hand on his arm. “But a visit to the aquarium isn’t all that important in the great scheme of things.”
“Do you know the definition of Scottish Alzheimer’s?” he asked, not for the first time.
“No. What is the definition of Scottish Alzheimer’s?” She’d found that if she repeated words back, people were more likely to remember them.
“You forget everything but your grudges.”
She laughed, as he’d meant her to. “Well, you’re better off than that. You have lovely memories of your Annie.”
“Is she coming today?”
“She passed on,” she reminded him, as she did at least twice every week. “Ten years ago.”
“Oh. Yeah.” He said the correct words, but she could see a lingering doubt in his eyes. “You look a lot like her,” he said.
“I’ll take that as a compliment.” She wasn’t nearly as dramatically beautiful as Annie Buchanan had been, but she wasn’t about to argue.
“It’s in your eyes,” he said. “They’re that same color. I always told her they remind me of the sun shining through the rain. . . . I should introduce you to my grandson. He’s a doctor.”
The stress caused by his struggle to remember the field trip, and the unwelcome memory of his wife’s death, seemed to drift off his handsome face, weathered by years of being outdoors on the sea. His eyes, clouded by the disease, brightened. “You could do a lot worse.”
Annie knew that his son was the doctor, while his grandson was actually deployed in the Air Force, but rather than correcting him, she merely smiled and patted his arm. “If he’s even half the man you are, Charlie, I’d definitely have to agree.”
They worked for a few more minutes. Annie felt a burst of optimism when, with a bit of coaxing, he was able to remember eating the ice cream in the photo taken of him at the seawall in town on the way back from the aquarium. She always sent an update to his son, Dr. Boyd Buchanan, after each of their sessions, and it was nice to be able to report positive news.
She was on her way out of the building when she dodged a scooter—whose rider had swerved to avoid hitting Daisy, a calico who’d jumped down from a chair—and plowed into a man who’d been entering the building. Distracted by a display on his phone, he hadn’t seen her coming.
“I’m sorry,” she said as she was brought to a sudden stop by the rock-hard wall of his chest. The wheeled bag carrying her craft supplies tipped over onto the floor.
“It was my fault.” Sounding anything but apologetic, he shoved the phone into the pocket of his jeans. “I wasn’t watching where I was going.”
Although she couldn’t see his eyes because of the wraparound Ray-Bans, she could feel the laser glare he aimed at the cat. Who was calmly licking her paw, either unaware or uncaring of the potential disasters she’d caused. “Especially in this place with all the animals underfoot.”
His sexily beard-stubbled jaw was firm, his chin ruggedly square and marked with a deep, delicious cleft.
Although the local joke went that Oregonians rusted instead of tanned, his tan suggested he spent a lot of time outdoors. Maybe he was a fisherman, like so many men in town? Or in construction? After a real estate dip due to the recession, in the past few months you couldn’t go anywhere in town without seeing signs of a construction boom, mainly beach houses and condos for wealthy weekenders
He was tall, lean, and hard enough that she’d felt as if she’d run into a wall of unyielding steel when her chest slammed into his.
Annie took a step back and lifted her purse strap, which had slid down her arm, more securely onto her shoulder. “I take it you don’t like cats?”
“I don’t exactly dislike them.” He shrugged shoulders clad in a black T-shirt that showed off that mus
cled male body in a way that supported the idea that he did some sort of physical work.
And heaven help her, when he combed his fingers through his shaggy, sun-streaked chestnut hair, she had a moment of what the nuns who’d taught in her high school would’ve referred to as an “impure thought.” A picture of his broad, dark, workingman’s hands on her body flashed wickedly through Annie’s mind.
“I just don’t get them.” His baritone voice roughened with exasperation. “They’re not like dogs, who let you know exactly what they’re thinking.”
Damn. He might be testosterone on a stick, but with that disparaging comment, his sex appeal plummeted several degrees. Not only did Annie love cats, but she was currently owned by a twenty-pounder she’d adopted at Charity Tiernan’s Christmas pet fair.
“That’s part of their appeal. They’re mysterious.” She started to bend down to pick up her bag, but he was faster. “They prefer keeping their thoughts to themselves.”
Wasn’t she the same way? Life in the revolving door of the foster care system and then her failed marriage had definitely taught Annie to keep what she might be thinking to herself.
“More likely people just mistake stupidity for inscrutability.”
“I suppose that’s one way of looking at it.”
Well, wasn’t he just Mr. Sunshine?
Deciding that the hottie in Ray-Bans was the male version of beauty going only skin deep, Annie felt sorry for whomever the man was here to visit. Feeling that she’d wasted enough time, she grabbed hold of her rolling craft bag, and after a momentary tug-of-war, he released it.
“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.
8
Mac watched 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.
