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I let out a quiet exhale, relief easing some of the pressure under my ribs. We were already off to a better start than my last few visits. I gave the aide a slight nod, and she withdrew her arm from Henry’s to give us a bit of space.
“You’ve got a nice view here,” I told him, easing my hands into my pockets and standing shoulder to shoulder with him. “I like all those flowers.”
Henry wasn’t looking at the flowers, though. He was staring at me.
“I know you, don’t I?”
A big, unnamed emotion trembled and groaned under the weight of this interaction, and I managed a slight nod. “Youdo,” I said, risking that piece of information because of how much I missed him.
Briefly, he looked away, staring sightlessly at the beautiful meadow beyond the edge of the fence. “You’re a lot bigger now, little pup.”
The nickname hit me like a blow to my sternum, and I swiped a hand over my mouth, trying to contain the aching sound of relief before it escaped in a messy sob. It took a moment before I could look at him safely. “A bit, yeah,” I managed.
Henry turned, settling his hand on my shoulder. “You still keeping my car clean? Keeping the house nice?”
I attempted a short nod, but a tear escaped before I could stop it. I cleared my throat and looked away, dashing a palm under my eye so he didn’t notice. “Got someone new that moved in a couple of days ago,” I told him.
“Family?”
“A woman about to have her first baby,” I said, my voice tight with everything I was keeping on a trembling, taxed sort of leash. “You’d like her a lot.”
“Good,” he said. “That’s good. That house needs someone to love it.”
“She will,” I whispered. “She’ll make it a home. Did the moment she walked in.”
“She pretty?”
“Beautiful,” I told him. “Most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”
His eyes were cloudier now than they used to be, surrounded by deep wrinkles and age spots, but when he turned them on me, I felt so stripped bare that suddenly I wanted to hide.
“Does that scare you, little pup?” he asked, as lucid as I’d seen him in years.
How badly I wanted to keep that admission buried, like letting it be said to someone somehow gave it more power.
“Terrifies me to the fucking bone, Henry.”
His slow nod made me feel like that was the answer he expected.
“Probably means she’s important then. The important ones always do that to you.” He shuffled closer to the fence, wrapping one hand around the black iron, staring at those flowers like he used to when we played checkers out on his back deck. “I had someone like that once, I think. She left before I could tell her. Married someone else.”
“You did?” I asked, head spinning. I knew better than to ask why he never told me before. These bursts of lucidity were few and far between, a mysterious, confusing gift of time that I knew better than to question.
He blinked a few times, and I fought the urge to push.
“You give her flowers when she moved in?” he asked. “Women like flowers.”
“Not yet.” My throat was scratchy and dry, my eyes felt like someone raked them with twenty grit sandpaper. “You think I should?”
“Good ones, too,” he said. “Those pretty wild ones that you can’t get in a store.”
“I know just the kind.”
His hand shook slightly as he removed it from the fence. “I have a field behind my house,” he said. “Do you know where it is?”
I dropped my chin to my chest and fought for composure, unable to look up again until I could unclench my teeth and breathe through the pain of watching him slip away again. “I think so, yeah.”
Distractedly, he nodded. “Good. That’s good.”
