back onto the walls that had long since bent and bowed off of them, and even managed to go into town to pick up some paint to freshen the place up.
The next time Katie came in here, she would see some major improvements courtesy of yours truly.
I hated how badly I wanted her to notice my efforts.
At the end of yet another long workday, I grabbed myself a beer from the fridge and stepped out onto the porch with my phone in hand. I popped the cap off the beer. It rolled across the porch to bump up against one of the support beams, where it teetered and landed on its top. I tilted my head back and took three big gulps of beer, smacked my lips, and closed my eyes.
It had been a long day.
In the back of my mind, I knew there were still things that needed to be done, things that were not on the island.
I needed to call my father’s care home and check in on him.
I hadn’t touched base with them in over a week. To some people, that might not seem like all that long, but to those who know what it is like to have a parent or an older family member with Alzheimer’s, they know how precious time is. Things could change in a matter of days.
Drastically.
If I said I didn’t worry about that daily, I’d be a liar. I had a crippling fear that I would call the care home one of these days and they’d tell me my father had succumbed to the deterioration of his mind and his days were limited. Once he took a turn for the worse, it wouldn’t be long before he was gone.
It was hard to prepare for the death of someone I loved when I felt like I’d had to say goodbye to them three years ago already.
Sometimes he didn’t know who I was. Sometimes he called me his brother’s name, Walter. Walter had died over thirty years ago in a drunk driving accident. I never met him. Mike hadn’t even been born at the time. But Alzheimer’s was a disease that made no sense, and my father was living in the past these days.
I stared down at my phone and considered putting off the call for one more day. What harm could another twenty-four hours do?
Irreparable harm.
I called the care home.
A nurse named Tiffany, who preferred to be called Tiff, answered my call with a cheery voice. “Everglade Senior Assisted Living. This is Tiff. How can I help you?”
“Hey, Tiff,” I said, swirling my beer around so it sloshed up the neck of the bottle. “It’s Peter Stenley. I was calling to check in on my old man. How’s he been?”
“Peter,” Tiff said delightedly. “I was wondering when you were going to call.”
Was that a good thing or a bad thing?
No, if it was a bad thing, she would have called me already. She has my information.
“How’s St. John?” Tiff asked.
“Beautiful. Sunny. Really hot.”
“Sounds like paradise, and a lot like California,” she teased.
“It’s nothing like California.” I chuckled. “For starters, nobody has tried to run me over with their car. It doesn’t smell like diesel and wet McDonald’s wrappers, either. Which is nice.”
“That sounds lovely. Still sticking to the original three-month plan?”
“We’ll see,” I said, wanting to move on to the important subject, my father. “How’s he doing, Tiff?”
Tiff hesitated for a moment. After five or so seconds, she sighed.
My heart sank.
“He’s as good as he can be, Peter. He asks about you a lot lately. Specifically in the last few days. Mikey, too.”
I frowned. I hadn’t heard someone call my little brother Mikey in quite some time. It was what our father called him when we were kids. I’d been Pete. Or as per my elementary-school teachers and my Aunt Emera, Petey. I loathed the nickname as much now as I had back then.
“What does he ask about?”
“All kinds of things,” Tiff said. “He wants to know where you’re living now and if you’re single. He thinks you still work construction and has tried to call your old job sites a dozen times over.”
“Ah.”
“And he misses both of his sons,” she finished.
Guilt flared inside me like a lit torch. “I know.”
Tiff was quiet for a minute again. “Peter, it’s not my job as a nurse here to tell family members what to do and when to do it, but your father is one of my very favorite patients, and I would hate