against china. Then he held out his hand to her. “You need a little refresher on your own show, little miss.”
“My own…” Clean House.
“I’ve seen most of them before, ’cause they keep running the same ones over and over.” He closed his hand around her arms, his thick fingers lacking in strength but not determination. “But I don’t mind the repeats. Come on, let’s get to gettin’, as they say.”
“As who say?”
He clapped his hands and let out a laugh. “Very funny.”
She followed him into the living room, where the TV blared a commercial. He gestured for her to sit on the sofa and settled into his recliner, waving the remote like a magic wand.
“I’m holding on for dear life to this thing. The way you’re tossing stuff away you’re likely to hide it.”
She sat on the edge of a heinous plaid sofa that she didn’t remember, something her parents—or Guy—must have bought after she left. Would Mom pick anything this ugly?
“Relax,” Guy said, using the remote to gesture toward the sofa back. “It’s the fastest hour on TV. But you know that.”
She didn’t relax, dividing her attention between a home improvement show hosted by a soulful, insightful, no-nonsense woman named Niecy—that must be who Guy called Nicey—and the man next to her.
She really had to do more research on Alzheimer’s. Didn’t the disease turn its victims nasty and cranky? Or did it just change a person completely? Because this man was…
No, she refused to go there. Leopards, spots, and all that.
“Watch the show,” he insisted when he caught her studying him. “This is what you’re going to do for me.”
Niecy Nash went about her business of taking control of a family’s mess, tossing the junk, selling what could be salvaged, then redecorating their homes, all the while helping her “clients” see what was wrong with their lives. Kind of like what Jocelyn did, only funnier.
Was that what she was going to do for her father?
Absolutely not. She already knew what was wrong with him—then and now. She wasn’t redecorating anything, just researching assisted-living facilities and solving this problem. It gave her something to do while she was here, anyway.
“Cute show,” Jocelyn said, pushing up from the sofa following the big reveal at the end.
“It’s more than cute,” Guy insisted. “It’s all about what makes people tick. You like that, don’t you?”
“Made a whole career around it,” she said casually. “I better get back to the china.”
“You gotta gift me for it.”
“No, no.” She headed back into the dining room, armed with a little more knowledge of how to play his game. “She ‘gifts’ for things that have huge sentimental value. Half of a chipped china set has no sentimental value. No gifting.”
“How do you know what has sentimental value to me?” he demanded, right on her heels.
She stopped cold and he almost crashed into her. Very slowly she turned, just about eye to eye with a man who had once seemed larger than life, but gravity had shaved off a few inches, and surely guilt weighed on his shoulders.
“I’m willing to bet,” she said without looking away, “that you can’t go through this house and find a single item that means anything at all to you.”
She didn’t intend for the challenge to come out quite that cruel, but tears sprang from his eyes, surprisingly sudden and strong. “That’s just the problem,” he said, his voice cracking.
She took a step back, speechless at the sight. Not that she hadn’t seen him cry; he could turn on the tears after an incident. He could throw out the apologies and promises and swear he’d never hit his wife again.
And Mom fell for it every time.
“What’s the problem?” she asked, using the same gentle voice she’d use on a client who was deluding herself over something. “Why are you crying?”
He swiped his eyes, knocking his glasses even more crooked. “You don’t get it, do you?”
Evidently not.
“You don’t understand how some things matter,” he said.
“Yes, I do,” she said, as ultra-patient as one of the crew on Clean House dealing with a stubborn homeowner. “Why don’t you answer a question for me first, Guy?”
“Anything.”
“Did you really live in this house?” Or did he just make it a living hell for the people who did? “Did you love anyone here? Make anyone happy? Build anything lasting?”
“I might have.”
“Did you?” she challenged, resentment and righteousness zinging right down to her toes. It was bad enough that he didn’t remember the misery he’d inflicted, but to twist