Page 10 of Distant Shores (Stapled Magnolias #2)

ADAIR

I ’d only been inside the maze that was the campus of Live Oak Independent Living for fifteen minutes, and in that time, I’d gotten lost and fallen in the road and nearly killed someone.

My ankle throbbed fiercely as I leaned my weight against the Jeep and let out a groan. The only miracle was that Delly wasn’t here to bear witness to my shame.

But that woman, or… girl, maybe, had definitely seen it.

My glasses flew clean off my face when I fell, so I had no idea how old she was or what she’d even looked like beyond a vague sense.

But surely, she was young-ish. This place’s website might’ve boasted about how active some of its senior residents were, but I had a hard time imagining anyone over the age of fifty could’ve gotten away with what she’d done without major injury.

Guilt held me prisoner as I rubbed my aching armpit and remembered that split-second of panic before the world tilted and she just…

threw herself off that skateboard. The only thing I knew for sure about the woman I’d almost killed was that she was strong.

As in, I think she might’ve bruised me when she shoved my crutch under my arm.

That, and she smelled like lavender.

I loved that smell.

The electric whir of a golf cart had me pivoting on my crutch, and I sagged in relief when Jillie—who I only knew from photos—and Pops rolled up beside me with someone else seated in the back.

“You made it,” Jillie said with a smile, but I couldn’t spare her any attention. Not with Pops, who could have been a stand-in for Sam Elliott with his bushy mustache, dark eyebrows, and gray hair, sitting beside her in a button-up Hawaiian shirt and… jorts.

My gaze zeroed in on his bare knees.

I didn’t think I’d ever seen his knees, but there they were. Just… there. Looking at me.

And I couldn’t stop looking back.

This year was really menacing me. Why could I see this so clearly, but not the girl-slash-woman-slash-hardy-senior-citizen I’d almost killed?

Sometimes I thought the universe hated me—at least a little bit.

“Addy?” Pops asked, and I plucked at my shirt, pulling it away from my sticky skin as I lifted my gaze to his face. “You okay?”

No, considering I was just thinking that I might need a pair of jorts to survive this weather.

“All good,” I said, shrugging out of my flannel. How much social credit would I lose if I tied it around my waist? My eyes flicked down to Pops’s knees again, and I yanked off my glasses to clean the lenses with the sleeve of my flannel.

“Well, well,” a voice said from beside me, making me jump and then scramble to not drop my glasses. “Hello there, young buck.”

I turned toward the newcomer as I put my glasses back on, then flicked my gaze to the now empty spot in the back of the cart. When I turned back to her and found her probing gaze on me, I bundled up my discarded flannel and held it in front of me like a shield.

She was definitely a resident here, based on her… umm. If everything about her was anything to go by.

“Oh, Wilbur. He’s such a strong, young man,” the older woman crooned as she turned her attention to Pops. “And you said he’s staying for the weekend?”

“That’s right,” Pops said, still sitting in the golf cart.

I surreptitiously glanced down at the older woman’s knees to check for scrapes, though surely if this were the woman from earlier, she would’ve recognized me.

She’d also likely be in the hospital.

Since my brain was officially addled at this point, I also took a discreet inhale of the woman, and my sensitive nose scrunched.

Menthol and roses.

Not a hint of lavender.

“Gracious, young man. If I were ten years younger,” she said with a sigh.

I frowned at her, then at Pops, who just shrugged unhelpfully.

The woman stepped in front of me, blocking my view of Pops, and held out her hand. “I’m Lenora C. Apworth, but you may call me Miss Lenny.”

I smiled and took her offered hand, noting the rings on nearly every finger and several clunky bracelets on her wrist. “Adair, ma’am. It’s nice to meet you.”

She kept hold of my hand and covered it with her other. “I’m part of the unofficial welcoming committee here at Live Oak. We’ve just about finished giving Wilbur the grand tour of the grounds.”

Pops appeared beside her then, his hands stuffed in the pockets of his…

I glanced down because I just could not help myself, and yep. They were still there.

His jean shorts.

He arched a bushy eyebrow at me that dared me to comment and then nodded at Miss Lenny and Jillie. “We’re good from here, ladies. Thank you for the tour.”

“Here, don’t forget this,” Jillie said, rounding the golf cart and holding out a folder to Pops with the Live Oak logo on the front.

“Director Links’s assistant will call me soon for an exact time for tomorrow’s meeting.

Morning is usually the best time for these kinds of things, so that’s my best guess right now. ”

Pops dipped his chin, and I took a small step back with my crutch as they embraced, not processing a word she’d said.

“And I’m glad you’re okay too,” Jillie said kindly as she turned to me, and I wiped the frown from my face. “Have you been to the beach yet?”

“No, not yet,” I said lamely.

Miss Lenny gasped. “Young man, you must go. It’s a beautiful day. Take your strapping grandpa, shed your shirt—” Her gaze trailed over my body, and I clutched my flannel closer like a scandalized maiden. “—and get some vitamin D.”

Then before I could say a word, she winked and sauntered away to a nearby house, tossing an “I’ll be seeing you boys” over her shoulder.

Kinda sounded like a threat.

“So…,” I said, then pressed my lips together.

Pops tucked the folder under his arm and walked past me to the Jeep without a word, and I couldn’t help but laugh at his retreating form.

“Adair,” Jillie said, grabbing my arm. “Could I speak to you for a moment?”

Her expression was serious as she guided me over to the golf cart. I pulled out my keys and unlocked the Jeep with my fob, and Pops opened the door.

“I’ll make it quick,” she said, pulling my attention back to her. “I wanted to tell you that Uncle Wilbur has made me his power of attorney. Medical and financial.”

I clenched my keys hard enough to indent my palms. “Oh.”

She squeezed my arm, her answering smile sad. “I know. I’m having trouble grasping it, too, but he wanted to do this now, when it was completely his choice.”

I blew out a breath. “I get that. I just have a hard time believing he needs it. He doesn’t really seem….”

“Yeah,” she said, getting my meaning. “But I’ve suspected since he’s been here that he’s just been doing a good job masking in front of us. Him signing those papers confirms it for me more than anything else has.”

I studied her for a beat, understanding dawning. “It’s worse than he’s told us.”

She nodded. “Yes.”

We shared a long look, the weight of the realization heavy between us.

Jillie took a step toward the golf cart. “I’m glad you here, Adair. Truly.”

“Me too,” I said with a sad smile, then jerked my head toward the Jeep. “I better get going before he toasts in the heat.”

I waved before she drove off, then hurried to the driver’s seat as fast as my crutch would take me.

“Sorry I didn’t see your calls when you arrived,” Pops said as we pulled out of the Live Oak gates and onto the main road.

“It’s all good,” I said, hoping my quick glances at him weren’t too obvious.

Once we were seated at a little seafood shack by the shore, I sent Delly a text update, and she responded with a selfie of her in the college library, a huge pout on her face.

Delly

I hate you.

I snorted and showed Pops the message, and he smiled fondly.

We placed our orders, and Wilbur Smith, never one to beat around the bush, saved me from having to ask the questions that were desperate to burst free.

“So,” he started, the bright print of his button-up Hawaiian shirt still making my brain glitch. “Tomorrow, I’ll be meeting my roommate.”

The server set down a basket of steaming hushpuppies nestled within the classic red-and-white-checkered paper between us.

Neither of us reached for them.

“The truth is, Addy,” he continued when she left, “I met with a doctor when I got here, someone recommended by Jillie. And, well….” He sighed, and it sounded like resignation. “I’m not getting any younger.”

“I could say that about basically everyone, Pops,” I said quietly.

The joke fell flat. Instead of trying to revive it, I learned my lesson and stayed quiet, but it wasn’t too long before Pops laid it all out for me.

In the simplest terms possible, he told me about the tremors that came and went. The extra stiffness in his muscles .

I knew those things. Had been quietly tracking them.

What I hadn’t known about was the patches of time he lost, or how frequently. Or how his dad had succumbed to dementia, hiding his symptoms until he almost set their house on fire.

The doctor he’d seen had confirmed it was Parkinson’s disease, he told me, his hands hidden beneath the table.

He looked down at them when he mentioned the potential complications that came with it as well as the monitoring and early interventions that were available at somewhere like Live Oak—specifically, the memory-care facility called Zinnia House, where specialists were on hand.

“No, Addy,” he said sternly when I asked about him moving in with me.

That brief daydream I’d sunk into when he said Parkinson’s, of driving us back to his A-frame cabin and managing his sickness myself?

Out the window. Merely a whim lost to the coastal wind.

He spoke matter-of-factly through it all, answering my questions between small, shaky bites of food, as if he could force this to all be normal. My gaze naturally strayed to his hands repeatedly, cataloging every tremor.

When he caught me looking, he raised a bushy, grey eyebrow at me, and I got the message.

I picked up a hushpuppy and ate, joining in on his delusion of normalcy.

But I’d seen what undiagnosed diseases like this could spiral into, and how quickly.

The medic in me was full of pride for the proactive way Pops was safeguarding himself, but the other part of me?

The unhealthy, unloved little boy who wanted to cling to his leg during storms but pointedly stood tall to prove that he wasn’t afraid?

The one who trudged through miles of woods to the cabin after particularly bad days of bullying at school or at home or both?

That boy was devastated.

That boy would have clung.

But when Pops started talking about his happy memories here at the beach with Grams and his eyes glistened, I shoved that boy into the sand.

He could make me selfish, and there wasn’t room for that here.

“She loved this place,” he said thickly. “The beach, the Gulf. I want to live this out for her however much I can.”

My throat constricted at the emotion in his voice. He didn’t seem sick to me at all, but how many times had I heard the same thing from family during emergency calls as they watched us wheel their loved ones into the ambulance?

Having reached the end of what he needed to say, Pops wiped his hands on his napkin, dropped it on top of his plate, and pushed it away.

I gazed out the open doorway of the restaurant to the rolling waves of the Gulf beyond it.

“Live Oak seems nice,” I finally offered. “From what I saw.”

“It is,” he said. “There are some characters there for sure.”

“Surely that lady was the exception to the residents there, not the rule?”

He grunted. “I don’t know. She asked me if I was ‘of the lifestyle.’ Any idea what that means?”

I choked on my sip of water, setting my plastic cup down hard right as the server appeared with the check.

Pops fished some bills out of his wallet and ignored my protests as he paid. He’d never let me pay for a thing in my life—not even now when I had more than enough .

“No change. Thanks, darlin’.”

She thanked him, and I could’ve sworn there was a blush on her cheeks. Even in his late seventies, Pops was charming.

“Just one last thing, Addy. Would you come to the meeting with me tomorrow? Normally Jillie would, but Rachel has an appointment.”

“Yes, Pops. Of course.”

We shared a brief smile before he got up from the table. “Why don’t you drop me back at Jillie’s and go to the beach? I’d like to rest for a bit.”

The silence on the ride back to Jillie’s condo was heavy. When we parked in their driveway, Pops clasped me on the shoulder but didn’t look me in the eye as he said, “Thanks, Bud.”

My throat was too tight to respond.