Page 80 of Meant for Mayhem

Lori’s tremors weren’t quite this bad yet, but they would be.

“Thirteen across.” I forced myself to focus on Walt, not letting my mind spiral into thoughts of how Lori was doing without me these last few weeks. “You started this one already.”

Another non-word grunt I cataloged. Maybe it was part of his personality, or maybe this was a sign that words were getting hard for him.

“Mountain cat. Six letters.”

“Cougar,” Walt said.

I grinned, then wrote in the letters, having confirmed both the answer to the puzzle and my previous question.

“Twenty-six down. Capital of Kansas.”

“Topeka.”

Walt reached for the water on his end table, his hand trembling hard enough that the ice clinked against the glass before he steadied it. I tried not to make my attention noticeable, but if he was going to make an evaluation hard to get through, I needed to make this feel like it wasn’t an evaluation at all.

He took one careful sip, swallowed twice, then set it back down.

Another mental note: swallowing was becoming work, too.

“Aren’t speech pathologists for toddlers?”

“Sure.” I looked up from the crossword. “Anything to do with swallowing or speech is in my wheelhouse. Sometimes that’s helping a toddler with their first words, and sometimes that’s helping grumpy old guys keep using the ones they already have.”

“Hmph.”

“I know. Not nearly as much of an insult as you were hoping.”

He didn’t answer, but he didn’t turn the television back up either, so I took that as permission to keep going.

Over the next half hour, the crossword became less about finishing the puzzle and more about getting to know Walt. He answered every clue I threw at him with little hesitation, but I paid more attention to everything happening around the answers than to the answers themselves.

His voice rarely carried farther than the kitchen table unless I reminded him to speak louder. By the end of longer sentences, it faded enough that I leaned in to hear. His attention never wandered, though, and neither did his memory. He was quick with answers, then followed up with anecdotes about each one.

The stories came slowly, pulled out one question at a time, but once they started, I learned more from what he told me than any chart ever could.

Forty-two years building houses.

Widowed almost six years.

Two sons.

Four grandchildren.

Season tickets to the Yeti before Parkinson’s made walking through Mile High Arena more trouble than it was worth.

Every few minutes, he’d take a careful sip of water, swallowing twice before setting the glass back down. His face rarely changed expression, even when he made a joke, but now and then his eyes softened enough to let me know I’d earned another inch of ground.

Soon enough, our time together was over, and I packed up my stuff. “Are your sons going to watch the game with you this weekend?”

“Are you a Yeti fan?” Walt looked a little more surprised than he had yet.

“I know a little.”

“They’ve got jobs. Kids. Lives.” His eyes lingered on one of the newer family pictures before settling back on the crossword. “They call every Sunday.”

It was an afterthought, like he wanted me to know they hadn’t forgotten him. Even so, something ached in my chest, not because his sons weren’t there. From everything he’d said, it sounded like they loved him, but life simply kept moving.