It's You by Jane Porter Page B

put her in diapers but if she’s aware she has to go, why piddle in her pants?
    And what is the worst that can happen if Ruth falls, and pulls me down with her?
    I break an arm or a leg?
    I get pneumonia?
    I die?
    It wouldn’t be the end of the world if it happened. I have to go someday. I might as well go doing a good deed.
    I told them that, too. But they thought I was being a smart aleck. I wasn’t.
    I was serious.
    But of course they don’t know that because they don’t know me.

SEVEN

    Ali
    O ver the past week, Dad and I settled into something of a routine. I run in the morning and putter around the house before getting a coffee in town and heading to Napa Estates to meet Dad for lunch.
    I haven’t given up trying to get him to leave the retirement home for lunch and try one of the picturesque restaurants downtown, but so far, he prefers the ease and comfort of meals in the home’s dining room.
    But Tuesday Dad calls me early, and announces he has plans for me, and I’m needed at his retirement home at eleven as the couple Dad and Edie usually play bridge with aren’t well and so they need to find warm bodies for the game. I’m to be one of the warm bodies. Jerry, the widower from Detroit, is the other.
    I’ve just been in the yard, weeding, and am still sweaty, with dirt-encrusted nails—a fact I forget until I clap a hand to my forehead and feel grit fall into my eyes. “Dad. Seriously?”
    “I thought you liked spending time with me.”
    “I’m
not
a bridge player.”
    “You are. You’re just not a good one.”
    “Even more reason why I shouldn’t play!”
    “But Edie’s partner isn’t, either. You’ll be fine. It’s Edie and I that will be challenged by our partners’ lack of skill.”
    “I’m really not in the mood. Let’s do something different—”
    “Like what? Watch TV? Listen to a ballgame? What will we do?”
    “We could pick up lunch from one of the cute Napa cafes and come here to the house for a picnic. I’ve been weeding the beds and getting ready to plant some flowers.”
    “Why? Are you staying in Napa?”
    “You said you wanted to keep the house. You said it was your investment property. I’m making sure it’s a good investment.”
    “Well, don’t do too much. You don’t want to get attached. You love the desert, remember?”
    “Why should I come play bridge with you when you never do anything I want to do? Hmm?”
    “Are you being serious, or a smart ass?”
    I hesitate. “Both.”
    He hesitates, too. “Fine. Be here by eleven for the game, and then later this week, or before you leave, we’ll go out to eat. Or go to the house. Or whatever it is you’re dying to do.”
    “Promise?”
    He sighs. “I promise.”
    I roll my eyes at his exasperated sigh—he sounds so put-upon—but at least I know he means it. Dad might not tell you what you want to hear, but he doesn’t break promises.
    • • •
    I arrive at Napa Estates for the card game thinking that maybe, just maybe, Jerry isn’t the fourth but Craig Hallahan will be. I don’t know why I think it’s going to be Craig, but I get to the centerand head to the Reading Room where Edie likes to play cards because it’s quiet.
    It’s quiet because it’s a
Reading
Room. But that means nothing to Edie, not even the posted sign on the wall inside the door asking residents and guests to take their card games and conversations elsewhere. But rules don’t apply to Edie. Others have to follow them, but not her. Apparently when you’re almost one hundred, it’s okay to say outrageous things and make demands and do what you want.
    Thirty minutes into the game, we’re in between hands, shuffling cards and sipping our iced drinks (which you’re not allowed to have in the Reading Room but that’s another rule that’s ignored) when she asks me why I chose to become a dentist.
    But before I can answer, she tells me I don’t look like a dentist.
    I’m not sure what to make of that. Do dentists come in