Page 38 of Frosted and Sliced

“Whether or not their heart is oversized and in trouble?” he asked. He was so deadpan, it was hard to tell if he was joking.

“Yes, I always insist on an MRI before dating a man,” she said.

“Seems reasonable.”

They rode in comfortable silence a minute before she faced him again. “Wait, I was berating you and you got me off track.”

“Please, by all means continue,” he said, full in on the sarcasm. “But it will have to wait until after. We’re here.”

She faced forward again, taking note of their surroundings. “A nursing home?”

“Is this more of a third date destination?” he asked.

“The joke does not lessen my confusion,” she said.

He pointed to the sign and she read it out loud.

“Maple Grove Assisted Living. Oh.”

“This is the only other maple thing I could find in the area,” he explained.

“So, what, you think the older folks have some kind of smuggling ring going on?”

“Maybe gambling,” he said. “Cock fighting. You never know what you might find, when you begin to peel back the layers.”

She was fairly certain the last sentence was serious, and she sobered a little because he’d probably seen a lot of bad things, plenty enough to convince him that elderly people in a retirement home could commit illegal activity, and that was depressing.

“Come on, Georgette,” he said, but in a way that might also have meant “cheer up, Georgette.” And because he probably didn’t want her to be burdened by all the things he knew, she made a concerted effort to push past it. Pasting on a smile helped lift her mood, and his, too, if the way his shoulders relaxed the tiniest amount was any indication.

He held the door for her and they walked to the desk. The receptionist looked up, eyebrows aloft with curiosity. It wasn’t the sort of place where a lot of strangers dropped by for a visit, and she probably knew most family members of the residents by now. Theirs was a small facility in a small town.

“May I help you?” she asked. Her eyes darted between Burke and Georgette, wondering which of them might be in need of assistance soon. Fleetingly her gaze paused on Georgette’s hearing aids before moving back to Burke when he spoke.

“Hi, I’m new in town and considering a place for my mother, in case I decide to move her from her current facility. I know it’s short notice, but I wondered if I could have a tour.”

Georgie braced herself for the woman’s refusal. It was, after all, short notice. No notice, in fact. But to her surprise the woman smiled and stood. “Sure. Follow me.”

It was a myth, Georgie thought, that her other senses were keener, due to her hearing loss. If the amount of times she had to squint in a day were any indication, her vision hadn’t received a boost. But today, in this place, the smell was overwhelming. Maybe, Georgie thought, it simply smelled that bad. In any case she had no idea what the smell was, only that it was bad. Certainly there was some human waste in there, but that wasn’tthe sum of it.Decay,she thought with a grimace she could barely suppress. It was the scent of a whole group of bodies that had started to decay while they were still alive, and that thought was even more distasteful than the smell. It was natural for the body to break down, of course, but was it natural for all those bodies to be gathered in one place?

I do not like this place,was her first visceral reaction, but she thought maybe she had received some of Brody’s anger and cynicism in that regard. When their parents died, they’d still had a handful of elderly relatives, aunts and uncles of their mother who could have taken them in. But none of them had.I think it’s best if Georgie stays in her home, with you,they’d all agreed. And Brody was so very capable, and so verythere. Her brother had never said anything in front of her, but she’d heard him telling Cotton once that they were lazy cowards, all of them.They don’t want to put themselves out for us, don’t want to mess up their comfortable lives for two teenage orphans.The bitterness in his tone had been a revelation, and it had been one more signal that he resented her and the undue burden she’d placed on his life.

At least we had money,she thought. Their family hadn’t been wealthy, not by any stretch. Her parents had both worked in factories that provided them with life insurance policies that barely covered their burial. But somehow their parents had had the providential wisdom to take out private insurance policies on each of them, totaling a close to a million dollars. Brody could have kept it all for himself. He’d earned it, Georgie thought, by giving up his dreams and staying home to raise her those last three years of her high school. But, being the fair minded and upright person he was, he had split it equally down the middle, not only saving her half for her until she turned eighteen, but also using his half for them to live on until she graduated. He’d paid off their parents’ house, so they’d been able to stay,and then used the money for all of their living expenses while he earned his criminal justice degree. When Georgie graduated high school, he’d presented her with her half fully intact and told her to make it last.

He had undoubtedly envisioned that her path would follow his, that she would use a tiny amount to live on and put the rest in savings. Instead she had paid for culinary school and then used the leftover to buy her inn. Brody had been perplexed. He hadn’t agreed with her choices but, to his credit, had let her make them regardless.

Georgie jogged herself back to the present and tried to pay attention to the nursing home, but it was difficult. Their tour guide walked in front of them, blocking Georgie from all conversation she seemed to be having. Burke didn’t correct the woman, and Georgie realized that not only had she come to count on him to do so, but that he wasn’t actually paying attention to anything the woman said. His eyes roamed the place, marking the details and anything out of the ordinary. Georgie wondered if he saw the facility differently than she did. To her, it was a sad place filled with people in various stages of decline. Nothing nefarious, nothing suspicious. Did Burke see anything amiss? Or was he actually viewing it through the eyes of a son who contemplated putting his mother there? She wouldn’t want her mother there, of that much she was certain, but maybe all the places were like this. Maybe there was no such thing as a nice place to stash the elderly.

All in all, it was a very depressing tour, made more so by the fact that Georgie couldn’t hear anything. Without the woman’s words as a distraction, she was left to her own grim thoughts of death and dying, loneliness and despair. The facility was filled with it, sad people who had given up hope. It came as something of a shock when Burke touched her hand. She jumped and faced him, but he wasn’t looking at her. He’d clasped her hand as hestared around the “entertainment room,” a stuffy space with a large television and a half dozen rocking chairs. The chairs were filled as everyone watched a daytime talk show at high volume.

After what felt like a long time, the tour ended. The receptionist gave Burke a packet and he and Georgie walked to the car in silence. Surreptitiously, Georgie took deep breaths, trying to push away the dismal stench of desperation from her nostrils. She wondered what Burke thought, but he didn’t say.

“Did you see anything suspicious?” she chanced as soon as they were safely inside the car.

He shook his head. “Except possibly a few violations of some sort. I mean, I’m not up on the law here, but it seemed like something was wrong, right?”

“That place was terrible,” Georgie said, in passionate agreement. “Definitely no place for your mother.”

He smiled slightly. “My mother is happy where she is. Besides, if I brought her here, then she’d know where I live.”

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