“Oh.” Sandra seemed confused.
Before she could inquire further, Diem added, “We’ll pop in and visit Nana until he shows. Is Donna around?”
“Donna? Um… She’s in at ten. Did you need to talk to her?”
“Yeah. Tell her to find me.”
We headed to the elevators, and I asked, “Donna?”
“A nurse.”
“And?”
Diem stabbed the button for the second floor. “And she broke policy and gave Ben my personal phone number, so if she doesn’t want me to report it to the director, she’s going to give us a hand.”
“Ah. I see.” I snagged the brim of Diem’s hat—he’d reclaimed it at the reception desk—and tugged him to my level. “It’s sexy when you blackmail people, Guns.”
The suggestion of a smile touched his mouth as the elevator arrived. Before he could get away, I pecked a quick kiss on his lips. “I love you.”
Inside the lift, once the doors had slid closed and we were alone, Diem folded me in his arms. As we traveled to the second floor, he sighed contentedly. “I love you, too.”
***
It turned out Diem’s nana was having a shower with the help of one of her care nurses, so we couldn’t visit. We wandered the second floor instead, locating Elwood Scarrow in the dining hall. Breakfast ended at eight thirty, but he and a few residents had remained behind, drinking coffee and chatting.
He was dressed in trousers and a brown cardigan, but under the cardigan, he wore a checkered dress shirt and a smart red bow tie. Histhinning hair had been gelled so thickly that the furrows left behind by the comb stood out. They curved from his side part and ended at his ear. His shiny pate showed through.
Evergreen kitchen staff hustled about, clearing dishes from tables, wiping crumbs and spills, and pushing in the chairs. The janitor I’d briefly met the other day—Aaron’s mother—used a long broom, sweeping from one end of the room to the other, gathering the dirt into a pile in the corner.
Instead of intruding on post-breakfast coffee hour, we observed Elwood and his companions from the hallway until Ben showed up with a groan ten minutes later.
“Leave it to Dad. Always schmoozing the ladies. My mother’s been gone fifteen years, and he told me the other day, he’s ready to date again. Called himself a spring chicken. Can you believe that?” Ben shook his head and sucked his teeth. “He looks ridiculous with that bowtie.”
Turning to Diem, Benaiah offered a hand to shake. “It’s good to see you, Mr. Krause. Thank you for coming. So sorry I’m late. They had two roads in my neighborhood closed due to flooding, so I ended up detoured halfway around the city. That’s a joke. It was a few blocks. Can you believe this rain?”
It was too many words for my socially crippled boyfriend, so he chose to nod companionably as he shook Benaiah’s hand, and then Diem motioned to me. “My partner, Tallus Domingo.”
We exchanged handshakes, and since I was the more outgoing of the two of us, I acknowledged Ben’s comment. “If it keeps it up, we’ll need to build an ark.”
Benaiah chuckled, although I didn’t think it was that funny.
“I met your father the other day in the event room,” I continued. “He told me he has three girlfriends already. He claims one of them is a fiery redhead.”
Benaiah pinched the bridge of his nose, but he was still smiling. “That does not surprise me. Who were they? Estelle was one of them, right?” He pointed into the dining hall. “She’s the one with the bangles and dangly earrings. He’s had his eye on her for a while. I don’t know of any redheads in residence. Do you?”
“Oh, no. It was none of those fine ladies. His female friends were all online. He found them on a dating app.”
A puzzled expression monopolized Benaiah’s face as he absorbed that comment.
“Did you know your father has a laptop?” Diem asked, all business.
“A laptop? I mean… Well, he set up the online banking, but when I pressed him for details, he told me Kael helped him. Since I knew that was bogus, I assumed… Well, gosh-dang-it, I don’t know what I assumed. He has a laptop?” The question felt rhetorical, so I didn’t respond, and neither did Diem.
Benaiah firmed his lips and stared at his jovial father, who flirted unashamedly with his elderly companions over coffee. He had an arm draped around one of the women but was making eyes at another. The elderly gentleman was bright and expressive. Apart from the clear signs of old age that wrinkled his skin and thinned his hair, he emitted aspring chickenvibe.
In the end, Benaiah convinced his father to join us in a private conference room down the hall, one he’d procured from a nurse who unlocked it and let us inside. I suspected it was a room where families gathered to receive bad news or to discuss end-of-life.
It had a vibe.
