Fast & Loose Elizabeth Bevarly (bts book recommendations .txt) 📖

over her jeans and purple T-shirt. Old, infirm people must stay unusually warm for the place to keep the AC turned down so low. Or maybe it was the overworked, underpaid staff who preferred the thermostat set at subarctic.

Her mother was sitting in a chair by the window when Bree entered her room. Although the sun wouldn’t set for a couple of hours, it was cloudy outside, so not much light was filtering in. Even without it, though, Bree could see that her mother’s skin looked even more delicate and thin than usual, that her eyes were a little more vacant than the last time she’d seen her, and that her hair, which she’d once taken such pains to keep tidy, was even messier than it had been before. She was dressed, though, which was reassuring. Even if her sleeveless, lightweight dress was a bit inappropriate for the coolness of the facility, and even if her shoes didn’t match. The pale blue color of the garment complemented Rosie’s eyes and gave them a little more life.

Bree scooped up a hairbrush from the dresser as she passed it, took a moment to put her happy, carefree face in place, then greeted her mother with a breezy hello and bent to kiss her cheek.

Rosie Calhoun smiled when she saw her, but it wasn’t a smile of recognition. Some days, her mother recognized her just fine and the two of them could carry on conversations about things that stretched back to before Bree was born. But other days, like today, she had no clue who the woman was she’d raised for more than a quarter of a century. Sometimes, she thought Bree was one of the nurses. On especially bad days, when she didn’t even recognize her surroundings, she thought Bree was a waitress. Or a hairstylist. Or a bus driver. Or any number of other people she’d encountered in her life.

“How are you feeling today, Mom?” she asked in an effort to jog what she could of her mother’s memory.

Her mother frowned at the question, obviously confused about the Mom part. But she said nothing to reveal her confusion, still in that stage of Alzheimer’s where she often recognized that something was wrong, but was too embarrassed to let anyone think she didn’t know what was going on.

Bree attended occasional meetings of a support group for the families of Alzheimer’s victims. The woman running it had told them that the best way to describe Alzheimer’s to someone who didn’t have it was to think about what it was like to start a new job without the benefit of orientation. You went into a place you’d never seen before, knowing you had something to do. But no one had told you what your job involved, and they hadn’t told you where to find the tools you needed to perform that job, and they hadn’t told you any of your coworkers’ names or titles or how you were supposed to interact with them.

It was like one of those anxiety dreams Bree had from time to time where she was thrust into a situation for which she was completely unprepared and panicked when she didn’t know what to do. But where she eventually woke up from her nightmare and was relieved to realize it was all a dream, Rosie Calhoun lived it every single day. And every day, her plight got just a little worse.

“I’m fine,” she said now. “Never better.”

Although Bree knew that wasn’t true, she was glad to see that her mother was at least in a place today where she could have a conversation. Some of the other patients here never left their beds. Others sat in near catatonia in front of the TV in the common room or gazing out the window. Still others wandered up and down the hallways looking for a way to get out. Bree honestly wasn’t sure which state was worst. And knowing she would have to sit by helpless and watch her mother go through all of them was almost more than she could bear. Especially since most victims of Alzheimer’s didn’t suffer its onset until much later in life than Rosie Calhoun’s fifty-five. Physically, her mother was one of the healthiest people Bree knew. She could potentially linger with the disease for decades. And once her mother’s money ran out…

But that was still a ways off, Bree told herself as she always did when her thoughts began to venture down that path. She still had plenty of time to find herself a rich benefactor to take care of her and her mother. With any luck at all, she might even be able to give her mother in-home care and get her out of her bleak little room here. Bree had kept a few of her mother’s favorite things after Rosie sold off everything else to help pay for the nursing home. And she’d put those few favorite things in her mother’s room here, in the hope that it would make the tiny space a little more familiar, and a little more comfortable. But there was only so much comfort one could get from a flowered chair and hand-crocheted throw and milk-glass floor lamp. Bleak was a hard thing to disguise.

“Hey, how about we go for a walk?” Bree said brightly. “It’s cloudy, but it’s not raining. There’s a nice breeze. You want to go out to the courtyard for some fresh air?”

The courtyard was actually more of a patio on one side of the facility that abutted the parking lot, and not the most scenic place in the world. But there were two broad maples that canopied it, and someone had planted a few flowers in terra-cotta pots along one side. There were a couple of wooden park benches to sit on, birds to listen to, and clouds and some lingering spastic sunlight to enjoy. It would be better than sitting in here.

“That would be nice, dear,” her mother said, standing.

Bree went to the closet