Page 116 of Friend Me

Epilogue

SIX MONTHS LATER

TYLER

Marlee’s face was pale,but her square chin jutted out in that stubborn way I loved—as long as it wasn’t directed at me. We sat in my car, parked in front of her father’s nursing facility. She’d wanted to visit before we left for Dallas, but I knew it was hard for her. Since we’d been together—six months now—she came to see him a few times a week, sometimes with me, sometimes alone.

I gripped her hand. “Ready, Princess?”

She’d been a princess since the first moment I saw her, dressed in her girly-pink work clothes and handling the executives as if they worked for her. Then, when we’d finally gotten together on the party boat, it’d slipped out. She hadn’t seemed to mind. And now she was my princess, I’d do whatever she asked of me: toss my coat over a mud puddle, climb a tall tower, fight off a dragon, all for her.

She turned to face me. As usual, seeing her brown eyes soft and sad almost stopped my heart. She gave me a wobbly smile and squeezed back. “Ready.”

We got out of my low-slung Mustang and met on the sidewalk in front of the hood. Hands joined, we walked in together. Marlee chatted with the receptionist and signed us in while I scanned the lobby. As usual, it was clean and bright but empty. No one sat on the sofa or the pair of straight-backed chairs. Bright-yellow sunflowers in a blue vase lit up the drab room. Like my Marlee.

The receptionist unlocked the secure door and walked us through. On the other side, one of the patient care directors met us. I knew her face, but I couldn’t remember her name.

“Hi, Liz.” Marlee remembered. Once she’d finally admitted that her dad needed more care than she could provide, she was on a mission. She’d done her research, chosen the best place for him, and monitored every aspect of his care. She chatted up the nurses every time she visited.

“He’s having a good day today,” Liz said, answering the question I knew Marlee couldn’t bring herself to ask.

The tension in her shoulders released.

Liz said, “We’ve been trying a new therapy with him this week. He’s in there now. Would you like to see it?”

“Can we?” Marlee asked.

“Of course. Let’s go.”

Liz led us through the facility and then, surprising me, outside through another secured door, along a covered walkway, to a corrugated metal building, not much larger than a shed. She used a keypad to open the door.

The interior looked like my dad’s workshop at home except lower tech. Hand tools hung on pegs on the walls, and three wooden workbenches took up the middle of the room. Fluorescent lights hung from the ceiling to illuminate each workspace. The sweet smell of sawdust filled the air, and despite the humming dust recovery system, dust motes and tiny curls of wood danced in the beams of light shining through the high windows.

Two men stood with their backs to us across the room in front of a manual lathe. One was the beefy nursing assistant we often saw with Marlee’s dad; the other, turning a chair leg on the lathe, was the man himself.

Will Rice had stabilized over the last few months. He still had bad days like the one when he’d wandered off and we’d found him at the transit station, but he had good days, too, when he knew Marlee. I always reintroduced myself since I never assumed he’d remember someone he’d met since his illness; my experience with Grandpa had taught me that. I hoped Will wouldn’t decline as fast as Grandpa had.

Liz patted Marlee’s arm and left us. I massaged Marlee’s shoulder where it met her neck, where the tension had started to build again. I wouldn’t push her, though. She had to do this on her own terms.

She rolled her shoulders back and approached Will where he worked the lathe. He stood on his good leg and used the weaker one on the foot pedal. The scrape of the blade on the wood covered the sound of our footsteps.

“Dad?” Her voice was too soft to carry over the grinding of the lathe. She cleared her throat and tried again, louder. “Dad.”

Will stopped the machine and looked at Marlee. A smile split his face, so similar to her own.

“Sunshine!”

Her back was to me, so I couldn’t see her face, but her posture relaxed. She reached up to hug him, and his sawdust-covered arms went around her. When he released her, dusty handprints marked the back of her pink shirt.

I approached and stuck out my hand. “Mr. Rice, it’s good to see you. Tyler Young.”

“I remember you, Tyler. I can see you’re taking good care of my girl.”

So it was a good day. “I try, sir. We take care of each other.” In fact, we were moving in together next month, but I wasn’t about to tell Marlee’s dadthat.Bum leg and all, he was strong.

“Let’s take a walk,” he said.

The assistant handed him his cane, and we all strolled out into the sunshine. The facility sat on a hill surrounded by rolling lawns. A few residents worked in a vegetable patch nearby.

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