Her father shrugged. “I don’t know. She’s busy.” Elena had been with her father twenty years, and in one day a week managed not only to clean the house but cook him several meals. Elena was a godsend.
“Shelly didn’t mention her leaving,” Cassie said dubiously.
“She’s going back to college.” Her father said this firmly, the way he said everything, like there could be no argument.
“College?” Elena was close to sixty, with grandkids. It seemed unlikely, but you never knew.
“What’s her sister’s name?” Cassie would confirm this with Shelly. Cassie felt a tug of guilt that it had been so long since she’d seen him. But even before her own problems consumed her, it had been painful to come home. She’d been sixteen when her mom was diagnosed. Her vivacious mother with her sparkly outfits and wit to match dissolving into someone utterly unrecognizable.
Her mom had tried to hold on to herself, picking out her own clothes even as the Alzheimer’s advanced, putting on makeup. Cassie had been horrified when she came home from college one Thanksgiving to find her mother weeping in the bathroom, lipstick in hand, unsure what to do with it. She’d swiped it alongher eyelid, then realizing her mistake, tried to rub it off. Her lid was streaked bright pink, her face blotchy from crying. “Can you help me?” she moaned.
Cassie had put a drop of cold cream on a washcloth and gently cleaned her mom’s eyelid. Then as her mother stood trembling, Cassie carefully applied the lipstick to her mother’s lips. “Rub them together,” she said. “Like this.” She rolled her own lips together to demonstrate, dying inside that her beautiful mother didn’t remember something as simple as lipstick.
Every time Cassie came home it was worse, until she finally stopped coming. Her father wouldn’t hear of a facility and kept her mom at home until the end. By then, Cassie was in law school and Shelly was already out west, starting her photography career.
Their mother was fifty-four when she died.
Cassie’s father finished his sandwich and dabbed up a few crumbs with his fingers. He looked tired. “Who were you talking about?”
“Never mind. It’s okay.” He had a right to be tired. He was eighty-five. Old people got tired. Sometimes they forgot; it didn’t mean he had dementia. Maybe Shelly was overreacting.
Cassie picked up the plates as he shuffled off to the family room to watch TV. Coming home always made her twitchy. Here in the house where she grew up, the nagging fear of dementia trailed her from room to room. Ridiculous, but there it was—that somehow the house itself might be the point of contagion. That something inside—radon or dust motes or lead in all those layers of paint—scrambled the neurons.
Her mother was about Cassie’s age when it started. Small things at first—mixing up words, losing her keys. Who didn’t do that? But now as she approached fifty, every name Cassie forgot felt like a warning. She tested herself constantly—the names of colleagues’ kids, her aunt’s birthday. The day sheforgoteggplantfelt like the beginning of the end. “That purple vegetable,” she was reduced to telling Andrew as she struggled in the market. “Grab a couple of those.” The word came to her in a rush of relief ten seconds later. “Eggplant,” she’d blurted. But ten seconds was too long to struggle with the word eggplant.
Shaking off the memory, she washed their lunch dishes and scrubbed out the sink. Vacuumed and mopped the floor. Wiped down the stove. Her dad hadn’t changed a thing since her mother died. The house had been built eighty years ago and the bones were still good. A solid house built to last. Her parents had done some updating over the years, but after her mom got sick, everything stopped. Her dad hadn’t cared enough to pick out new paint or change the cabinets, and the kitchen was frozen in time with forty-year-old appliances that somehow kept chugging along. The only thing he’d bought was a big screen TV.
And of course, his bees.
By the time Cassie finished up in the kitchen, her dad was dozing on the couch with the news on. She’d originally planned to stay a day or two, but who was she fooling, her father was barely managing. She couldn’t leave without sorting this out.
She needed a plan. That was the way she’d always proceeded. Actionable steps. That was how she’d gotten through law school, how she’d always attacked life. Until lately, it had worked pretty well.
She carried her bag upstairs, lingering in front of a row of framed pictures in the hallway. Her mother; forever hip in seventies bell bottoms and a tie-dyed top. She couldn’t have been more than late thirties. Ten good years left. Was her mom’s mind already retreating there, a decade before she started showing symptoms? Did she notice changes even then? And the thing that tormented Cassie—could there be something brewing even now in her own brain, a slurry of toxic proteins slowly amassing strength, a treasonous army that would eventuallyoverrun her? Shelly, who had dodged the genetic mutation that guaranteed early onset, was forever haranguing her to get tested. “At least you’ll know what’s going on,” she said.
“I’ll think about it,” Cassie said, and she did. She thought about Alzheimer’s every day. Every missed word, every lapse in concentration unnerved her.
She had never told Andrew any of this. He only knew his grandmother had died young. If Cassie had the mutation, Andrew had a fifty percent chance of inheriting it too. She knew she needed to be honest with him about their family history, but she could barely think of it herself.
Because if it was coming, did she really want to know?
Chapter Two
The next morning, Cassie got up early and went for a run. Her father was already sitting with the paper and coffee, but she had to move first. She ran nearly every day unless it was icy or snowing. She had a gym membership for extreme weather but preferred to be outside, heading west on 79thStreet, bouncing impatiently at the lights or ignoring them if there wasn’t much traffic. Hitting her stride after she crossed the West Side Highway and gained Riverside Park, with the Hudson on her flank. The city, on steroids, muscling to the water. She ran with her earbuds in, listening to podcasts or music. Or sometimes just the sounds of the city revving up for the day.
Running was almost a religion to her. Five miles. More on the weekends. Phil used to urge her to skip it once in a while and spend a lazy Sunday morning with coffee and bagels. Looking back, maybe she should have. Staying in shape was part of it. No question. But more than that, all the research showed a connection between exercise and cognitive function. They didn’t know exactly why, only that people who moved had sharper brains. Less likely to get dementia. So she ran like her life depended on it.
There weren’t many cars out early on a Saturday, especially on the back roads of Laurelton. It felt like country up here, with the narrow winding roads and old stone walls. The trees hadn’t leafed out yet, about a week later than in the city. Everything wasslower up here—neighbors even said hello, which would never happen in New York.
She crossed the road and jogged up the hill onto the undeveloped land next to her father’s property, coming upon a grassy area where, surprisingly, someone had installed dozens of bee hives. She kept well away, imagining how many insects must be churning inside.
The woods had the expectant feel of spring—leaf buds about to unfurl, ivy emerging from leaf litter on the forest floor. She and Shelly had once buried a time capsule here with a detailed letter about what was happening on Earth in 1978: the first woman astronaut, Reese’s Pieces, a test tube baby.
She paused at a speckled boulder. That might be the spot, but maybe not. Who could remember after all these years? She’d bet even Shelly, who had a faultless memory, couldn’t find it. But the doubt persisted as she ran on. Her mind, which had always been her biggest asset, played games with her, taunting her with what she thought she knew or should have known or might have forgotten. Should she have remembered the rock? Would Shelly have remembered, would anyone? She had no way of knowing. All she had was the dread that paced her, no matter how hard she tried to outdistance it.
She almost missed the sign.Luxury homes by Weber Properties.The rendering showed a high-end gated community. Pretentious construction. No charm, just big and new. The acreage next to her dad’s house apparently was going to be developed.
For a moment, she felt a piercing sense of loss. Her parents had always loved that their land backed up to all this open space, that they couldn’t see another house from where they sat. She had nothing against change. In fact, economic development for the city of New York was what she did for a living, crafting the legal framework for historic preservation and affordable housingprojects. The city was a living, breathing entity, always evolving. Even here in Connecticut, life moved on. But her dad would be upset the property was being developed. She wondered if he knew, or if he’d known and forgotten.
