I picked up my now-cold half burger. Not to be compliant but because, after the tips, the food was a highlight of the job.
“How do you get home from here?” he asked.
“Train,” I said, taking a bite.
He reached for his wallet. “I’d rather you take a cab.”
“No.”
“No?” He sounded like he couldn’t believe I was so stupid, so impertinent.
I rolled my eyes. “I’m not yours, Dom. You don’t get to worry about me or play protector. You’re my boss. I’m your employee. Unless you’re forking up cab fare or Uber credits for all the admins on staff, the answer is no. No special treatment. No extracurricular sex. No seduction attempts. No flirting. The air is cleared.”
He stared at me a long beat. Those eyes impossibly sad.
It’s what he wanted.
So why did the man look so damn miserable?
22
Ally
It was early morning when I ducked in the side door to the Goodwin Childers Nursing Home as another family was exiting. I was on thin ice with the billing department, and I just didn’t have it in me to have another conversation with Front Office Deena about the importance of being timely with my payments.
This nursing home had the best dementia ward in a fifty-mile radius, and my father deserved the best.
Even if I couldn’t afford it.
Skirting the hallway that led to the front desk area, I snuck through the cheerful assisted living wing to the security doors of the memory ward.
Braden, one of my favorite nurses on the wing, waved through the glass as he buzzed me in.
“Ally! Good to see you back,” he said. “We missed you and your dad around here.”
“It’s good to be back,” I told him. “How’s he doing?”
“It’s a really good day,” he said with a grin.
“Really?”
“So good, he’s not in his room. He’s in the lounge.”
“You’re kidding?”
Braden lifted a finger in the air. I stopped and listened. The faint notes of Hilton Ruiz’s “Home Cookin’” reached me, tugging on the strings of my heart as a hundred memories flooded through me.
He grinned. “I’ll take you back.”
I followed Braden’s defensive line-sized frame as he maneuvered past glass that opened into an internal courtyard of turf and concrete. The fountain had been drained for the season, and the color of summer and fall was long gone, but the evergreens were decked in colorful Christmas lights for the duration of the winter, giving residents something to enjoy.
The piano got louder as we approached double doors propped open facing a nurses station.
And there against a wall of windows, wheelchair parked nearby, was my father behind the piano.
“Ally, my girl!”
My father’s gleeful pronouncement when I walked into the lounge room melted off the lingering cold. A rush of love so swift and fierce swamped me.
“Dad!” I crossed to him and hugged him hard, delighted when he hugged me back, rocking side to side in that way of his that had once been so familiar.
“Have a seat,” he said, patting the bench next to him. “Tell me everything.”
This tiny window of time was open, and I needed to savor every moment of it. Not willing to miss out on one second of this, I fired off a text to Zara.
Me: Running late. Family emergency. I promise I’ll make it up.
I’d work till midnight every night if it meant I got to enjoy my dad being my dad.
“Let’s take a selfie before I have to go to work,” I insisted. I took one on every good day, knowing now how precious these moments truly were.
Dutifully, he slung his arm around my shoulders, and I clicked away as we hammed it up for the camera. He pressed a kiss to the top of my head before pulling back.
“Where are you working again?” he asked, a frown touching his lips as he bumped up against the hole in his memory.
I cleared my throat. “It’s a new job. I’m working for a fashion magazine.”
“Well, isn’t that something. Do you love it?” he asked. My father was a firm believer in doing as much of what you loved as possible. A job was no exception.
I thought about it for a beat, then nodded. “I do. It’s fun and fast-paced, and the people are… interesting.”
“Is there a Miranda Priestly?” he asked, nudging my shoulder.
“When did you ever see The Devil Wears Prada?” I demanded with a laugh.
“I read the book.”
“Smarty-pants,” I said fondly. “The Miranda at my job is actually a Dalessandra, and she’s pretty wonderful. Her son is another story though.”
“Tell me everything,” he said, noodling out a Sammy Davis Jr. tune.
“About what?”
“This son. Is he evil?” Dun dun dun went the piano keys.
I laughed and thought about Dominic. “Evil? No. A pain in my ass? Yes.”
“Sometimes pains in the asses make life more interesting. Do you remember this one?” he asked, his fingers working the keys, teasing out another familiar favorite.
I smiled and rested my fingers on my end of the keys. I remembered everything. And now I treasured it.
I stayed another hour before leaving Dad at the piano when he volunteered to teach another resident a jazzy little tune on the piano. It was always a struggle knowing when to leave. If I left while he was still present, I was missing out on time with him. But if I stayed too long and the mood slipped, the ensuing disappearance of Dad was devastating.
Too in my own head, I didn’t notice the danger until it was practically on top of me in a pink chenille sweater.
“Ms. Morales, I trust you’re here to pay your late fees?”
Shit.
Front Desk Deena, harbinger of late fees, lurked just outside the memory ward. She had thin, flat lips that were always painted a bright pink. Her red hair reminded me of Ronald McDonald… if Ronald dabbled with a jewelry fetish. Today she was wearing four diamond rings, a pendant with several birthstones that suggested this woman actually had a family, and rather large diamond studs in her long ear lobes.
She terrified me.
“Uhh…” I hadn’t even formed an actual word, but my neck was doing its best impression of a sunburn.
“$5,327.94.” She rattled off the amount that I too knew by heart. It was exactly what stood between my father and another month in this facility.
“I’m aware,” I said. “I believe it’s due next Saturday.” I’d memorized that, too, from the thirty-day eviction notice she’d so helpfully sent me. It was the day after my first paycheck from the magazine. And I needed every dime of that paycheck to make this payment.
She pinched her lips together tighter, making the hot pink disappear completely. Her eyes narrowed behind purple-rimmed glasses. “I’d certainly hate to have to tell the nurses to start packing your father’s things.”
Her tone suggested otherwise.
“That won’t be necessary,” I assured her. My phone chimed. It was time to get back to the office and earn that paycheck.