seems to know which of the residents like to have him jump up and which don’t.
We made a slow circle around the social room, making sure everyone who wanted to pet Baxter got their turn. Big glass windows opened onto a nice patio and walled garden, a safe place for the residents to get fresh air without any danger of wandering away. Baxter and I had gotten about halfway around the room when I spotted a couple sitting on a bench out on the patio. I recognized the woman from our weekly visits. Mrs. Butler was ninety-four, and she was talking animatedly with her visitor. I stopped dead in my tracks. Sorren was sitting in the moonlight next to her, holding her hand.
For a moment, I couldn’t stop staring. Sorren was chatting with Mrs. Butler and looking more natural, more relaxed, more alive, than I had ever seen him. It was obvious from their body language that they knew each other very well. The tilt of the woman’s head, the way she reached out a veined hand to touch his arm, they weren’t the touch of a grandmother to a great-grandson. They were the flirtation of a young woman to her beau.
Suddenly, I felt as if I were intruding, and I turned my back to the window, in part so I would stop staring, and also because I didn’t want Sorren to sense me there. He was so happy, an adjective I can’t usually use to describe him. Six hundred years, give or take a few decades, weighs on a person. He’s seen a lot of history first-hand, much of it tragic, and lost a lot of people who were friends and colleagues. Sorren is an old soul in the body of a grad student. And while I knew it was none of my business, I couldn’t help but be filled with questions.
“He’s such a good boy.” Mr. Thompson’s thready voice cut through my reverie. He was a stoop-shouldered man in a striped bathrobe, t-shirt, and sweatpants, with corduroy slippers trodden down on the heels. A wooden cane was tucked into the seat of the wheelchair next to him. Long ago, he must have been built like a linebacker. Now, he was all bones and angles, with skin that no longer fit. Behind his thumbprint-marred reading glasses, Mr. Thompson’s blue eyes were watery, but I saw a flash of something in them as he petted Baxter, something that might have been a memory of the person he used to be.
“What? Oh. Baxter. Yes, he is a very good boy,” I replied, pulling out of my thoughts. “He’s taken quite a shine to you.”
Mr. Thompson laughed, something between a chuckle and a wheeze. “Well, I always had dogs, you know,” he said. “All my life, until I came here. I wouldn’t let them bring me here, you know, until Tilly died. Little rat terrier, lived to be fifteen years old. Fifteen. You know, in dog years, that’s one hundred and five.” He smiled. “Believe it or not, that made her even older than I am!”
I reached down to ruffle Baxter’s ears, and Mr. Thompson’s hand brushed mine. I felt a sharp tingle like an electric shock, and drew back. From the surprise in his expression, he felt it too. “Sorry. Static electricity,” I murmured. But I didn’t believe it. I know magic when I feel it, and that was what had zapped me, I was certain of it.
From the pocket of his bathrobe, Mr. Thompson withdrew a battered old pocket watch. The crystal was cracked, and the hands were in the wrong position for the hour. I bet it hadn’t worked in a long time. “I need to go to my room,” he said abruptly. “Got to get ready.” He peered at me over his reading glasses, and his tone had a sudden urgency. “Watch yourself,” he warned, dropping his voice. “They’re coming. The Judge comes at midnight.” He gave me a look that seemed to stare through me to my bones, as if I ought to understand what he couldn’t quite put into words. For a moment, I saw stark terror that seemed utterly rational, not a product of dementia.
“Be careful,” Mr. Thompson admonished once more. Then he nodded to Baxter and me and wheeled himself across the room and toward the hallway with more vigor than I would have imagined he possessed.
When I looked up, the old woman in the walled garden was alone. Sorren was gone.