predictable. So just to throw you off, I’ll tell you I was going to say you need a life coach.”
“Very funny.”
Zoe wove her way through the light traffic and crossed over to the causeway, hitting the accelerator so more wind whipped through the open top.
“You do.”
“Stop it.” Jocelyn tugged her baseball cap and shades, holding them in place. “I’m fine.”
“Really? Let’s review, shall we?”
“No.”
Zoe settled deeper into the driver’s seat, one hand on the wheel, one tangled in her mess of hair that flew like a curly platinum flag behind her. “First, you have been falsely accused of single-handedly breaking up one of the most famous marriages in the world, and yet you refuse to clear your name.”
Jocelyn shifted in her seat. “I have my reasons.”
“So you are forced into hiding or wearing a disguise. That’s totally normal.”
“Extenuating circumstances.”
“Second, you hate your father—”
“For good reason.”
“And yet, you care enough to find him the right place to live, make sure he’s not alone for too long while you do so, and you kissed him good-bye when we left.”
Ugh. She’d hoped Zoe hadn’t noticed. “He kissed me. He does that now. Trust me, it’s a result of his disease.”
“His disease that makes him kind and affectionate, despite the fact that Alzheimer’s famously makes people nastier, not nicer.”
Damn it, she hated when Zoe got deep. Couldn’t she just stick to sex and booze jokes? “His case is unusual, I suppose. But I still hate how he treated my mother.” And me. And Will. “It was… bad.”
“But he’s forgotten it.”
“Has he? I don’t know. I certainly haven’t.”
“You think he’s faking it?” She stole a glance at Jocelyn. “ ’Cause I have to tell you, the thought occurred to me, too.”
“Would be convenient, don’t you think?”
Zoe puffed out a breath of disgust. “It would be so fucked up there are no words. But kind of brilliant, too.”
Jocelyn squeezed her hat brim against the wind. “I don’t know how sick you’d have to be to forget you took your wife’s favorite perfume and dumped it down the toilet because she forgot to call the plumber.”
“What kind of perfume?”
Jocelyn choked. “Chanel Number Five.”
“Ouch. The good stuff. But, seriously, you think the old guy is faking this?”
Jocelyn pulled the seat belt away from her chest; the pressure on her heart was making it hard to breathe. “I wouldn’t put anything past him. How could he remember Henry the Heron and not his own daughter?”
“I read somewhere that Alzheimer’s patients remember the most random things, like what shoes they wore in 1940 but not what underwear they put on that morning.”
“When were you reading about Alzheimer’s?”
“I read a lot of stuff about old people, Joss. The woman who raised me is damn near eighty. Maybe older, maybe younger, she won’t say.”
“Pasha is healthy as a horse.”
Zoe just looked out over the deep blue water of the Intracoastal. “So, what if this is all an act and he finds out his shenanigans are landing him in an old-age home? That would blow.”
“It’d blow his cover, is what it would blow.”
Zoe tapped on the brakes as the car in front of them slowed, using the chance to give Jocelyn a hard look. “Do you really think he’s faking it?”
“I don’t know. Maybe at times he is, maybe not. It wouldn’t change my decision either way.”
“But if he can take care of himself, why don’t you just let him be?”
“Because he can’t take care of himself,” she said, ire and frustration rising. “Will has to take care of him and that’s wrong. Will’s not his son, regardless of what Guy thinks. So he’s going, whether he wants it, knows it, or has an opinion about it.”
“That’s right,” Zoe said. “Plus you love shit like this. Organizing, managing, shoving bad people into their proper boxes.”
Jocelyn just closed her eyes and let the powerful gusts partially drown out the words she didn’t want to hear. Was she shoving Guy in a box? Well, what the hell, why not? He shoved her mother into a closet once.
“So where were we?” Zoe asked.
“On our way to Vista d’Or.”
“I mean where were we on the Jocelyn Bloom Life Management Track.”
“We came to the end.” She folded her arms and turned away, hoping that would end the conversation.
“Without taking a trip down Will Palmer Road?” Zoe asked.
“Dead end. Take a left at the next light.”
Zoe took the turn down a wide boulevard in the middle of Naples, taking in the designer stores and upscale restaurants as they passed.