The Map of True Places by Brunonia Barry Page A

extra half pill added here”—he pointed to the chart—“and here.”
    â€œSo basically he still gets a dose every three hours,” Zee repeated, to be certain she was correct. “Though two of those doses will increase.”
    â€œThat’s right,” the doctor said. “Every three hours except when he’s asleep. There’s no need to give him a pill if he’s sleeping.”
    â€œHe nods off all the time. If I don’t wake him to give him his pills, he’ll only get one every six hours.”
    â€œWake him during the day, but don’t give him anything at night,” he instructed. “You have any trouble sleeping at night, Professor Finch?”
    â€œSome,” Finch said.
    The doctor reached for his prescription pad and wrote a prescription for trazodone. “This is to help you sleep,” he said to Finch. To Zee he said, “It should help with the sundowning as well, which should stop his wandering. And give him his first dose of Sinemet about an hour before he rises. He’ll want to move, but he’ll be too stiff. We see some nasty falls in the mornings.”
    Zee looked at Finch.
    â€œYour daughter will have to keep a close eye on you in the morning,” the doctor kidded.
    She wanted to tell the doctor that she didn’t live with her father, that it was Melville he should be telling all this to, but Melville hadn’tcome home last night, and she had no idea where he was. When she had asked Finch where he was, all he would say was that Melville was gone.
    The doctor started to the door and turned back. “Do you have ramps and grab bars?”
    â€œHe has one grab bar,” she said. “In the shower.”
    â€œI’m going to send over an occupational therapist to check the house. The OT can tell you what you’re missing.”
    The doctor extended his hand for Finch to shake. “Nice to see you again, Professor,” he said too loudly, as if he were talking to a deaf person and not someone with what Zee had just now come to realize was advanced Parkinson’s. She wasn’t certain how Finch and Melville had kept that fact from her.
    â€œI’m sorry the meds didn’t work out,” the doctor said. “Not so bad to be Nathaniel Hawthorne for a day or two, though, all things considered.”
    Finch didn’t smile back. He took Zee’s arm as they left the office together.
    â€œYou lied to the doctor about the freezing thing,” Zee said. “I’ve seen you freeze.” She remembered the last time Finch had come to Boston for one of his checkups. As they were leaving the restaurant, he’d frozen on his way out the front door. He couldn’t move forward and he couldn’t move back. They had all stood helplessly waiting for the freeze to break, freeing Finch to step out the door.
    â€œNot for a while,” he lied. “I haven’t frozen once since the last time he asked me that damned question.”

8
    F RIDAY-AFTERNOON TRAFFIC NORTH FROM Boston was brutally slow. Zee dialed the house again from her cell, hoping that Melville would answer. She was really starting to worry about him.
    â€œDid he go to see his family?” she asked. Melville had family somewhere in Maine, a sister and two nieces. They weren’t close, but he’d been known to make occasional visits.
    â€œNo,” Finch said.
    â€œWell, where the heck is he?” Zee was frustrated. She had asked Finch where Melville was at least ten times and was tiring of his one-syllable answers.
    Melville had seldom left Finch’s side for the better part of twenty years now, a fact that Zee found difficult to comprehend in these times of trial marriages and soaring divorce rates. The two had become a couple long before her mother’s suicide, though Zee had been too young to realize it at the time. When they’d first gotten together, Zee had believed her father when he told her