Page 68 of The Way We Are

Ryan

After putting away the bag of groceries the nurse thrust at me, I drop my eyes to a line of drawers extending from one side of the kitchen to the next. Savannah’s kitchen has more drawers than it does cabinets.

Grumbling a curse word under my breath, I yank open the first drawer. Even if the drawers are as empty as the cabinets stacked above them, it's still using up valuable time I’d rather spend pacing the hall outside Savannah’s hospital room.

I find the nurse’s card in the sixth drawer I open, but his name isn’t the only thing I uncover. An old-fashioned accounting ledger book is stashed beneath Willis’s card. Usually, I’d pass by any book without a second glance, but the name scrawled across the top in elegant scroll begs not only a second look, but a third one as well.Petretti.

Confusion piqued, I tug the thick book out of the drawer and flip it open. The first few pages look like regular everyday accounting, but the last dozen or more pages capture my interest. They are filled in with handwriting I know all too well, the same writing in the letter I found stashed in my mother’s jewelry box weeks ago. It's Savannah’s handwriting.

Although I’ve never been a fan of accounting, basic math isn’t a problem for me, so I quickly catch on that the columns where Savannah’s handwriting is introduced don’t add up to the tally shown at the bottom of the page. It isn’t just missing one or two digits—it's missing many.

Ignoring the warning alarms sounding in my head, I snap the ledger closed and hotfoot it back up the stairs. By the time I’m knocking on Thorn’s door, sweat is glistening on my skin.

Thorn greets me with a smile. “Hey. You’re... ah...”

“Ryan,” I fill in. The similarities between our first exchange and this one are hauntingly similar. “I’m a friend of Savannah’s. Your daughter.”

“I have a daughter?” Thorn asks, his eyes dancing between Willis and me.

“Yes,” Willis answers on my behalf, his tone friendly. “Look at her. Isn’t she pretty? She looks just like you.” He hands Thorn the same photo he grasped earlier before joining me at the side of the room.

“What is it? Is it Savannah?”

I shake my head. “No.”I hope.“It’s Thorn. If I were to ask him a business question, could he answer me?”

Willis grimaces. “Thorn is in stage six of dementia: severe cognitive decline. There are days when he can’t count backwards from ten. You could ask him, but if he becomes frustrated, he will lash out violently again. His inability to solve problems is one of his biggest triggers. This disease took his brilliant brain and turned it into mush. There's no guarantee he will understand what you're talking about.”

“But I could try?”

Willis smirks. “I like your optimism, but I don’t like your chances.”

He waves his hand in front of his body like he's introducing me to his Royal Highness, granting me permission to approach Thorn.

“Isn’t she pretty?” Thorn appraises when I stop to stand next to his bedside.

Glancing down at Savannah’s photo, I smile. “She is. She'sverypretty.” My praise adds an extra twinkle in his eyes, one I’m hoping not to erase with my next set of questions.

“Can I show you something, Thorn?”

“Sure,” he answers, his mood positive.

I open the ledger at the section that confused me earlier before placing it across his splayed thighs.

“Thanks,” I murmur, accepting a pair of reading glasses from Willis.

Some of the confusion wrinkling Thorn’s forehead smooths when I place his reading glasses on his nose. Needing to help with something so simple adds to the wrongness of his disease. Thorn is young; he only turned fifty a few months ago. He shouldn’t be tackling a disease like this so early in his life. I didn’t even know it was possible for someone so young and healthy to have Alzheimer’s. It's truly devastating, and my heart is breaking for both Thorn and Savannah.

Thorn runs his hands down the paperback like he's stroking the fur of a cat. A trickle of hope thickens my veins when he scans the pages left to right. But when he continues the same routine long after his eyes have fallen from the pages, my hopes fade to nothing. He doesn’t have a clue what he's looking at.

Smiling to issue my thanks for him at least trying, I carefully remove the ledger from under his hand and snap it shut.

“Sorry,” Willis mouths as he replaces Thorn’s juice-stained pants with fresh ones.

Too disappointed to reply, I dip my chin in farewell before heading for the door.

Just before I exit, Thorn asks, “Were they angry?”

I take a step back and peer at him in confusion.

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