“Are you sure you don’t want to come with us, Ms. Tarrou?
Augustine glances up at the handsome male EMT as she lowers herself into her armchair and waves her hand dismissively. “No, no. I’m feeling much better now. You’ve been a great help.”
The EMT looks at me, and I shrug, showing him to the door. He gives me a number to call if Augustine has another episode before he leaves. I thank him and shut the door.
“Make sure you lock it,” Augustine calls, shivering in her chair. “Just in case…”
I shoot her a sidelong glance, but oblige. When I make my way back over to her, she has her feet propped up on the ledge in front of the woodstove. She looks a whole hell of a lot better than she did when I found her standing dazedly in the middle of the street earlier, although she still looks a bit shaken.
When she saw me earlier, though, something in her changed completely. The look of panic on her face turned into a pleasant smile, and she shuffled over to me, holding her arms out for a hug.
“I still can’t believe you’re here,” she says now, shaking her head. “And to think I was so rude to you yesterday!”
“It’s alright, Augustine,” I reply with a smile as I take a seat in the rocking chair beside her. “You just mistook me for someone else, that’s all.”
The elderly landlady’s face hardens at the reminder. “Well, you’re not her,” she says with a shudder, even though it’s quite warm in here between the warm spring weather outside and the wood stove going. “You’ll never be like that woman.”
I can’t help but shudder a little, too. Something in Augustine’s voice makes me feel uncomfortable.
“Can I ask,” I say, turning in my chair to face her, “why would you be so unwilling to open the door if I was Selina?”
Augustine’s brown eyes, normally sparkling with life, suddenly go cold. She wrings her hands. “She’s a bad woman, ” is all she says, wrapping her arms around herself as if to shield herself from the thought. “A very bad woman.”
I can’t entirely disagree with her, I’m afraid. I think Selina is nasty to her core. But I also don’t want to feed into a dementia patient’s delusions, so I decide to let the subject go. She’s only just started to feel better, and I don’t want her to spiral again.
Earlier, Cliff told me that she has delusions about government spies watching her; that she ran out of the apartment building claiming that people were in her walls.
We all know that’s not true, of course. And it breaks my heart that she feels so unsafe.
“Well, maybe you should write a note to yourself and put it on the door,” I say. “We’ll come up with a code: if I knock three times quickly and then two times slowly, that’s how you’ll know it’s me when I visit.”
Augustine seems to like that idea, and I help her craft a note that she can tape to the inside of the door. I have her add her signature so she knows that she was the one who wrote it, and not the ‘spies‘ who are allegedly following her.
Just before I leave, we tape the note to the door. Augustine sees me out, hesitating in the doorway.
“You’ll come back tomorrow?” she asks hopefully.
Chapter 70
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I nod and give her hands a warm squeeze. Her fingers are slimmer and more knotted than five years ago, the skin papery and loose. But it’s still her. “Of course,” I say. “I’ll come every day at noon on the dot, just like old times, and we can have tea and cookies and talk about books.”
Her face lights up, and she squeezes me back with a strength that surprises me. “I’m so glad you and Arthur are back together, you know.”
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