He moves to the bed where there’s a copy of A Christmas Murder on the pillow. He must have been reading it last night, and that’s where his confusion started. He remembers the way he looked at his daughter in the police station, the way he pictured her naked, and the feeling of disgust sends him rushing to the bathroom where he throws up into the toilet. He feels like a creepy old man who drills holes into school fences so he can add kids to his mental spank bank. What kind of man looks at his own daughter that way?
The answer, of course, is obvious. A sick one. One who doesn’t know who his daughter is, one who even forgets who he is. He can feel them coming now, the dark thoughts, an army of them marching in his direction and, like always, he wonders how he got here. What he did in life to deserve this.
He cleans himself up. He goes back into the room. He puts A Christmas Murder back into the bookcase. He starts to undress. When he slips his hands into his pockets to empty them, his finger presses against something buried near the bottom. He pulls it out. It’s a gold chain with a gold four-leaf clover hanging from it. He turns it over and studies it from different angles, but no amount of studying makes it familiar or suggests who it might belong to. Then he thinks that he wouldn’t be much of a crime writer if he weren’t able to connect the dots—he’s stolen it from either one of the staff, or from one of the other residents. Great, so now he’s going to be labeled not just the crazy man, but the crazy thief too. Just one more thing to add to the growing list of bad things he’s done in his life but can’t remember. Tomorrow he’ll drop it somewhere on the grounds for somebody else to find, but for tonight he needs to put it somewhere safe. And hidden. Last thing he needs is a nurse to walk in and see it on his bedside table.
He opens the sock drawer and reaches into the back to hide it, but there’s something already back there—an envelope the size of a greeting card. It’s thin near the ends and a little bulky in the middle. There’s nothing written on it. He doesn’t recognize it. He sits on the bed and opens it.
Inside is a necklace. And a pair of earrings. And a locket.
You know what that is, don’t you?
The words aren’t his, but those of Henry Cutter, and Henry is the real deal. Jerry might be able to connect the dots, but Henry’s the guy who makes the puzzles.
“No,” he says.
Yes you do.
Jerry shakes his head.
They’re mementos, Henry says.
“I’ve been stealing from people?”
That’s not all you’ve been doing.
“Then what?”
But Henry has gone and Jerry is left sitting on the edge of the bed alone, confused, frightened, sitting with an envelope full of memories he can’t remember.
DAY FIVE
“My name is Jerry Grey and it’s been five days since I was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.”
“Hi, Jerry.”
“And it’s been two days since I last forgot something.”
“Well done, Jerry.”
That’s how Henry would write about the support group that Sandra wants you to go to, if he were writing this journal. You still need updating on Henry, and on support groups, and that will happen soon. Support groups are for other people, the same way car accidents are for other people. Sandra thinks it will be good for you. You fought about it, actually—though fought is probably too strong a word—but before you read all about the fight, or about Henry, here’s what you need to know about Sandra. You love Sandra. Of course you do. Everybody does. She is the absolute best thing that has ever happened to you. She’s beautiful, smart, caring, she always knows the right thing to say. When things are going badly, she is there to talk some sense into you. When the reviews are bad, she’s there to tell you the reviewers don’t know what they’re talking about; when the reviews are good, she’s there to tell you that reviewer is the smartest guy in the world. You bounce ideas off her, sometimes you go to the gym with her, you run with her, you used to hike when you were younger, you’d go camping and skiing and once you went skydiving together because you wanted to be able to write what you know. Your wife can’t walk past a cat without wanting to give it a cuddle, she can’t walk past a dog without a Howzzit going boy, can’t watch a chick flick without crying at the end, can’t walk into a mall without buying a pair of shoes, and she can’t imagine what you’re going through even though she gets you, and you can’t imagine a life without her.
You’ve been married for twenty-four years and, if you do the math, you’ll see that Eva is twenty-five years old. You dated for five years before the wedding, which included three years of living together. You met back in university. You were getting yourself one of those fandangled English degrees that were popular back in the day, and you were doing a psych class too—psych 101. And why were you doing these things? Because you wanted to be a writer. Ever since you were a kid, telling stories is what you wanted to do. An English degree would help you tell those stories, and a psych degree would help you understand the characters. That’s where you met Sandra—in a room of people all wanting to learn what makes the mind tick. Your opening line to her was We need crazy people to make a living doing this. She laughed, it was a warm wonderful laugh that made you feel warm and wonderful inside, it was a smile that made the world melt away except for her. You can even remember what she was wearing—tight blue jeans with in-fashion holes in the legs and hems that looked like hedgehogs had fooled around on them, a sleeveless red top that matched the shade of her lipstick, and her blond hair was flowing down to her shoulders the way you’ve always liked it. But for the last ten years or so it’s always been in a ponytail, even at the dinner party where you said This is my wife—please fill in the blank. You went to the cinema that Friday night. Seeing a film may be a cliché for a first date, but it’s a good cliché. You went to see a Star Trek movie. She was a fan, and you told her you were a closet Trekkie, and she asked what else you were keeping in the closet. You told her your last girlfriend.
Back then, of course, in your university days, you weren’t really a writer. You always suspected that the university education you were getting is what you would fall back on as your house filled up with rejection slips from the publishers. You wanted to be a writer from day one, but it was your mother who encouraged you to continue your education, her scoring point being what an English degree would do for your creativity. By the time you met Sandra, you had written a couple dozen short stories, but you didn’t dare show Sandra any of them until you’d been dating for a few months—and even then it was only after she assured you that she knew they were going to be just great, because you were just great. You were convinced if she read any of your stuff she would tell you it was good in a very vague Oh yeah, it’s good, I mean, sure . . . I’m sure people will like this, and by the way I can’t see you Friday night as I have to wash my hair / pick up a cousin from the airport / I’m getting a cold, don’t call me I’ll call you kind of way. What she did tell you was that your stories needed work. She told you that every character had to be perfectly flawed. She was the one who over the years convinced you to write a novel. THE novel. And that’s what you did. You wrote THE novel, and THE novel was awful and Sandra was kind enough to tell you. So then you wrote THE NEXT novel, and that was awful too—but not as awful, she told you, and you tried again. And again. It would be years later you finally put that university degree to good use and got it right, but during those years of study Sandra was tiring of psychology and was thinking of switching to law when she found out she was pregnant.