Chương 8
“It might also please you.”
“Pleasure is overrated before ten.”
Rosa parked.
Eleanor remained in the passenger seat.
People crossed the lot carrying paper cups and reusable shopping bags. A man in running clothes argued into his phone near a cart return. Nothing in the world appeared to recognize that Eleanor’s authority over her own life might be altered inside the beige building.
“Did I put my handbag in the refrigerator?” she asked.
Rosa kept both hands on the steering wheel.
“I found it there.”
“Did you see me put it there?”
“No.”
“Did Celeste?”
“She said she did.”
Eleanor looked down at the bag in her lap.
“What about the stove?”
“I smelled gas when I arrived.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“The burner was on.”
“Did I leave it on?”
“You were alone.”
Eleanor’s mouth tightened.
Rosa turned toward her. “I don’t know which things mean something. That is why we are here.”
“You think I’m declining.”
“I think you deserve the truth without anyone arranging it first.”
Eleanor nodded once.
They went inside.
Dr. Lang was a small woman with silver-framed glasses and a habit of waiting through silence instead of filling it. When she learned Eleanor had not arranged the appointment herself, she asked Adrian and Celeste’s names, then closed the referral notes on her computer without reading them aloud.
“Do you consent to an evaluation today?” she asked.
Eleanor sat straighter. “Yes.”
“You can stop at any time.”
“I understand.”
“Would you like Ms. Bell present?”
Eleanor looked at Rosa.
“For the history. Not the testing.”
Dr. Lang nodded.
The first hour involved medication lists, sleep patterns, hearing changes, grief, alcohol use, nutrition, and medical history. Eleanor became annoyed when asked the same question in different forms. Dr. Lang did not apologize.
The second hour was harder.
Eleanor named animals from drawings, repeated numbers backward, drew a clock, recalled words after a delay, and explained how a fire engine differed from a bicycle. She performed well on some tasks and poorly on others. When asked to remember five words, she remembered three and became furious at the remaining two.
“You designed the test so I would fail,” she said.
Dr. Lang folded her hands.
“The test is designed so difficulty becomes visible.”
“There. That tone. You all practice it.”
“What tone?”
“The one people use before taking away keys.”
Rosa looked down.
Dr. Lang waited.
Eleanor’s anger faded into embarrassment.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“You don’t have to apologize for being afraid.”
“I am not afraid.”
Dr. Lang raised her eyebrows slightly.
Eleanor looked toward the window.
“All right,” she said. “I am afraid.”
The physician recommended blood tests, a medication review, hearing evaluation, and brain imaging before offering conclusions. She said Eleanor’s performance suggested mild impairment in attention and delayed recall, but the cause remained unclear. Poor sleep, hearing loss, depression, thyroid problems, vitamin deficiency, medication interactions, and early neurocognitive disease could produce overlapping symptoms.
“Do I have dementia?” Eleanor asked.
“I cannot answer that today.”
“Can I manage my trust?”
“I cannot answer that either. Medical capacity is not a single switch. It depends on the decision and the person’s understanding at the time.”
Eleanor looked at Rosa.
“That is not what Celeste implied.”
Dr. Lang glanced at the closed referral file.
“I would like permission to review the notes sent by Ms. Wynn,” she said. “I would also like independent accounts from people who spend time with you.”
“Independent of whom?”
“Of anyone with a financial interest.”
Eleanor’s expression sharpened. “Good.”
Before leaving, she asked for a copy of every document Celeste had submitted.
The receptionist said the release might take several days.
Eleanor said, “No. They are my records.”
The receptionist explained the portal process.
Eleanor had forgotten her password.
For ten minutes, she argued that the password had been changed without her permission. Rosa watched her grow more agitated, then noticed that Eleanor was entering the email address for her old charity account rather than her personal one.
Rosa touched her sleeve.
Eleanor looked at the screen.
The fight left her face.
“Oh,” she said.
The receptionist pretended to rearrange pens.
In the elevator, Eleanor stared at the floor numbers.
“Do not tell Adrian about that.”
Rosa pressed the lobby button.
“I won’t hide anything important.”
“It was an email address.”
“It frightened you.”
“It embarrassed me.”
“Both can be true.”
Eleanor looked at her.
“You have become very bold.”
“I have become tired.”
To Rosa’s surprise, Eleanor laughed.
It was brief and uneven, but real.
They stopped at the grocery store because Eleanor insisted she needed coffee and did not want to sit in the medical building’s café where someone might observe how long she took to count change.
She paid with a credit card.
At a small table near the bakery, Eleanor stirred sugar into her cup and said, “I did call Ivy Claire.”
“Yes.”
“Claire stood the same way when she was worried. Very still, as though movement might make adults notice her.”
Rosa nodded.
“I knew who Ivy was,” Eleanor said. “The wrong name came out.”
“That happens.”
“Does it happen to you?”
“Yes.”
“With dead people?”
Rosa thought of her older sister, who had died in Mexico when Rosa was twenty-six. Once, while half asleep, Rosa had called Ivy by her sister’s childhood nickname.
“Yes,” she said.
Eleanor studied her coffee.
“What if Celeste was right?”
“About some things?”
“About enough.”
Rosa picked a crumb from the table.
“Being right about your fear does not make her right about what she did.”
Eleanor looked toward the automatic doors. Shoppers came and went beneath a blast of warm air.
“I almost admire her,” she said.
Rosa did not respond.
“She saw Adrian’s weakness clearly.”
“Which weakness?”
“He will avoid any problem that requires him to disappoint two people at once.”
Rosa drank her coffee.
“That is not uncommon.”
May you like
“No. But it is expensive.”
Adrian spent the morning in his office with the yellow notebook, the trust document, and three years of family emails open across two monitors.
