Page 18 of Fallen Crown

And then I hang up the phone and cry myself to sleep.

Chapter Nine

Brice

As soon as my father was declared incompetent for the purposes of ruling, before Alex was able to take over, my mother instituted a schedule for him. Since Alzheimer’s often operates on a first in, last out system, his short-term memory is likely to be impacted before his long-term memory wavers too badly. She wanted the schedule to get far enough into his brain that it would provide some grounding for them both as he became more confused and forgetful. Magical thinking, likely, but we do what we can to cope.

Yesterday when I visited him, he asked me three times in the space of an hour what I was up to later. Each time I mentioned the adventure race, he asked me similar questions—not identical but close enough. Information isn’t sticking on a regular basis.

Today, his balance is off, and I’ve been following him around their suite of rooms to make sure he doesn’t fall and break something. Since he retired as king, his decline has become more noticeable, as though he was somehow holding himself together or his position tethered some part of him to the here and now in a way he no longer has. Or maybe I’m spending more time with him, and I’m seeing things I should have seen before. Things I suspect Julia’s mother saw, things I know my mother pinpointed as more than mere forgetfulness.

“Alex has had the baby.” My father arches his brows in my direction, looking for confirmation. He does this a lot now. Information he thinks is correct but can’t be completely sure and has to be verified.

“Yes,” I agree. “They’ve called her Grace.”

“I’ve met her?” He frowns, and his eyes flick back and forth as though he’s searching for a memory.

“You have.” He sees her almost every day, but I know better than to pile on extra details.

He gives a satisfied nod and settles into a wing chair near the fireplace.

My mother is due back from running her errands in a few minutes. I tried to beg off being the one to watch Dad, but she doesn’t like asking staff when he’s still very coherent, if forgetful, sometimes confused, and a bit off-balance. But every time I look at him, I picture the other Alzheimer’s patients I’ve seen and interacted with since I became a patron of the Alzheimer’s Society. He doesn’t get better. He only gets worse. Some patients decline with a certain sweetness, and others burn bright with rages. No two people are exactly the same. There’s no way to know who he’ll become as the disease ravages him. My dad and not my dad all at the same time. The man who raised me is trickling out, one lost memory at a time.

There’s a knock on the central door to my parents’ suite of rooms, and before I can call for whoever to come in, Alex pokes his head in the door.

“Mom’s not here?” Alex says by way of greeting.

“Errands. What’s up?”

Alex enters the room and shuts the door behind him. He runs a hand through his hair and releases a deep sigh.

I’m tempted to push for whatever is bothering him so much that he sought our mother. They’ve had a rocky year between Alex’s almost wedding to a Denmark princess and my mother’s initial stubborn attitude about Rory. All seems to be well there now, but Alex isn’t one to seek advice from Mother. Even with our father’s memory issues, Alex is more likely to ask Dad’s opinion on something rather than our mother’s. After all, Dad’s long-term memory is largely unaffected still. He and Dad drew even closer after Dad’s diagnosis. I suspect Alex covered some of Dad’s day-to-day shortcomings before the truth came out.

“We voted on the final version of the law today,” Alex says, and he glances at our father who has fallen asleep in the wing chair.

My heart migrates into my throat, and I can’t speak. I just nod at him to continue. Part of me is desperate for Dad to have the option to use it, but another part of me is like Nick and wants to cling to any grain of hope I can find. Either way, I lose my father, and I’m keeping the wall of grief at bay by not thinking about any outcome too deeply. Right now, my father is here. Someday, he will not be.

“He’ll qualify, I think, if we can get Dr. Bennett to put the medical paperwork together this week. Then it has to be reviewed and confirmed by a second doctor. Finding one who’ll agree with Dr. Bennett shouldn’t be a problem. Dad has to sign the right to die forms in the presence of a lawyer.”

I clear my throat and hope my expression doesn’t portray my conflicted feelings. Agreeing that it’s the right thing for our father to have the choice in how his life ends is one thing, but setting the final steps in motion is another.

“When?” I manage to get the single word out around the lump in my throat, and I hope Alex understands my meaning.

“He has to go before he’s lost the ability to consent. Given that the disease tends to take recent memories first, and there’s already decline there...” He runs a hand through his hair, and when he meets my gaze, I see the conflict in him too. “Soon. It would have to be soon.”

I slump into the chair across from Dad, and I take in his sleeping form. My gaze roams over the planes and angles of his face, trying to memorize every detail. In some ways we’re lucky, maybe, that there’s so much evidence around the island of the life he’s lived. Pictures, videos, speeches, and the three of us. None of that makes the sharp ache in my chest any easier to bear.

“Second thoughts?” Alex asks.

I grip the back of my neck while I consider what this desperation creeping into me means. Laying my forearms on my knees, I glance at Alex. “Don’t tell Nick. This is what Dad asked us to do for him, and I don’t want my uncertainty to bolster our brother’s.”

“Is that what you’re feeling?”

“What are you feeling?” I counter.

“As though there is no right answer.” He sucks in a deep breath. “Slow or quick or somewhere in between, the awfulness is still there, at least for us. But if we do what he’s asked, then at least maybe it’s not there for him.” He runs his hands from his temples down to his chin. “Rory and I have talked about it a lot. No matter what, I can’t get what I truly want—a healthy father. That’s not an option before me on the table.”

I release a deep sigh and place my head in my hands. He’s right, but even that doesn’t lessen the chasm opening inside me. As a kid, whether we were in trouble or not, we always knew our father would shield us as best he could. Bellerive and its people were important to him, but I never doubted that we were too. Sometimes I felt like Alex and Nick were a bit more important, but that meant less pressure for me. Hard to be angry about that.