It was the ranch that had brought them together. That, and the slough.
One day, a week into his stay, Mr. Rhoads was marching laps down the hallway in his hat and flannel jacket, strong hands clenched to his walker, when he passed a conflagration.
Gigi Montero was at the nursing station, stretched to her full four-foot-ten height in gold lamé leggings, wagging her neon-pink press-on nails at Beth.
“Your daughter, she is a precious gem! You cannot let her dirty herself in that filthy ditch.”
Beth cast a placating smile. “Miss Gigi, Jack and I have been hiking around Elkhorn Slough all her life. And she’s been paddling out for years. She’s careful. We’re fine.”
The smaller woman stepped back, cutting off Mr. Rhoads’s path of travel. “Beth, you do not know what is in that water.”
Beth’s smile sharpened. “Well, there are the jellyfish, and I’ve heard some stories about sharks . . . but they haven’t taken any teenage girls yet.”
Miss Gigi clutched at the rhinestone heart on her sweater. “Ay, Beth. You are killing me.”
Mr. Rhoads decided his best way past was through. He spoke up. “She’s telling you Elkhorn Slough’s a fine place for a young person to be.”
The two women turned, Beth grateful, Miss Gigi annoyed. Mr. Rhoads looked calm. He was a man who could stay still for a long time.
“You are Mr. Rhoads,” Miss Gigi said, appraising him. “I met your son. Tall. Very clean. But I have not met you.” She held out one pink-taloned hand to him.
Mr. Rhoads looked at Beth. “Your daughter a sculler?”
“Paddleboard. And she leads kayak tours.”
Mr. Rhoads nodded in satisfaction.
Miss Gigi did not. She flung her Day-Glo hands in the air. “That girl should be working somewhere respectable. Like 7-Eleven. You say the word, I call my regional manager. Cesar will get her out of that stinky water and into a good store in Salinas.” She whirled down the hallway and disappeared into the TV room, the door banging closed behind her.
Beth and Mr. Rhoads looked at each other. Their mouths were set, but their eyes were smiling.
“What’s your daughter’s name?” he asked.
“Jack. Short for Jacqueline.”
He nodded. “Good name. How long has she been going out on the slough?”
“We’ve been walking it for fifteen years. She’s been paddling for three. We live right alongside it.”
“North bank?” he asked. “Only I don’t remember you.”
“South. I don’t think we’ve met.”
“I lived on the north side for eighty-four years, on the old Roadhouse ranch. Raised my kids there. Wish I was there right now.”
The Roadhouse ranch was right across the water from Beth’s house, on the rolling hills that sloped up and away from the slough to the north. Beth imagined what it must have been like to grow up there, to have a parent like this, someone who listened.
“Maybe you can tell me about it sometime,” she said.
His filmy eyes lit up. “Anytime. You know where to find me.” He looked up, as if he could spot pelicans flying above the popcorn ceiling. Then he shook his head and continued his walk.
Now, Beth stood silent on a cold Tuesday morning as the EMTs rolled Mr. Rhoads to the double doors. She turned back to the desk.
“Has the family been informed?”
Rosa nodded. “I called his daughter. She was scheduled to visit today. And I left a message for his son. The poor man. He was just here on Saturday.”
Most patients’ families visited in groups, as if there was safety in numbers. But Hal Rhoads’s children never came at the same time. His son, Martin, was a weekend visitor, a clean-cut Silicon Valley techie in his early forties who drove down each Friday afternoon from San Francisco to receive a long list of weekend ranch chores Hal had assigned him. Martin was friendly, stopping by the nursing station most Fridays before he left to chat about his father, the ranch, and his start-up that was going to revolutionize nanotechnology.
Hal’s daughter, Diana, on the other hand, had no interest in conversation. Diana was older than Martin, a frosty Carmel matron who approached the nurses each Tuesday and Thursday morning with a faint but unshakable look of disapproval. She fell into the camp of visitors who held themselves distant from the nursing home staff, out of either haughtiness or, more likely, fear. If they didn’t build relationships with the staff, they could hold on to the fantasy that their loved one’s stay was temporary.