just enough sparks of lucidity to get my hopes up, but the waves of dementia quickly sweep them out to sea.
We’re floating far from shore by the time I kiss her and tell her goodbye and that my father will be by today, hopefully.
“Oh, and who is your father?” she asks.
“Your son Wells.”
“I think you must be mistaken. I don’t have a son.”
As I walk out of the building, I desperately want to talk to someone and unload all of this. I pull up my favorites list, then stop with my finger over Elliot’s number. After what he said about Grandma Judy yesterday, it seems almost disloyal to tell him how much she’s slipping.
I don’t realize until my phone rings and I see the name on the screen that there is someone I can talk to. I think of the expression on his face when he spoke of those difficult last promises to his grandfather, the promises that kept May Crandall’s secrets and my grandmother’s, and instinctively I know he’ll understand.
Something in me rushes headlong across the distance, even though we haven’t spoken since that day at the nursing home several weeks ago. I told myself I wouldn’t get in touch with him again, that it was better to leave things be and move on.
As soon as I answer, he seems unsure of why he’s called. I wonder if he’s been thinking the same thing I have—there’s no place for a friendship between the two of us. Our parking lot encounter with Leslie proved that point. “I just…” he says finally. “I’ve seen some of the press about the nursing home exposé. You’ve been on my mind.”
A warm, pleasant sensation rushes through me. I’m completely unprepared for it. I will it not to show in my voice. “Ohhhh, don’t remind me. If this keeps up much longer, I’m liable to go all Ninja Turtle on someone.”
“No you aren’t.”
“You’re right, I guess. But I’d like to. It’s so incredibly…frustrating. I understand that my father is in public office, but we’re still human, you know? You’d think some topics would be off the table…like cancer for one. And watching your grandmother struggle to remember anything about who she is, for another. It feels like people will poke a spear in anyplace they can draw blood these days. It wasn’t that way when I was growing up. Even in politics, people had some…” I search for the word, and the best thing I can come up with is “decency.”
“We live in an entertainment-driven world,” Trent says soberly. “Everything’s fair game.”
I open my mouth to further vent about the attacks on my family and then think better of it. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to unload on you. Maybe I need another trip to the beach.” It’s not until the words are out that I realize how flirty they sound.
“How about lunch instead?”
“What?”
“I just thought I’d see if you were free, since I’m in Aiken. I’ve been doing a little digging around in my granddad’s papers and talking to people who helped him with his searches. One of them is a man who was a courthouse worker in Shelby County, Tennessee, back when all the adoption records were still sealed. From what I can tell, he funneled quite a bit of information to Granddad.”
Instantly, I’m back in the thick of it. The scents of that tiny Edisto cabin tease my senses. I smell pipe tobacco, old newspaper clippings, dried-out bulletin boards, peeling paint, faded photos. “You mean so that your grandfather could help adoptees find their relatives, right? So…you’re taking up where he left off then?”
“Not really. I was nosing around for May Crandall. Thinking maybe I’d uncover something about the little brother she never found, Gabion.”
I’m momentarily stunned. This guy is genuine to the core. He’s also a better person than I am. I’ve been so obsessed with family problems, I’ve been delaying calling the seniors’ rights PAC about May’s situation. Now I realize that I’ve been brushing this task aside on purpose. I’m afraid to have anything to do with her, given all the controversy after the “Aging Unevenly” article. If word got out that I was helping her, our political enemies would accuse me of using her to prop up our bruised public image.
I can’t be seen having lunch with Trent either. I can’t possibly go, but I can’t quite make myself say no, so I continue the sidetrack. “That’s really nice of you. What did you find?”