Chapter 4 - Eleanor Had Been Trying to Protect the Children From the Truth
Mom did not tell me immediately.
That hurt almost as much as everything else.
When she was discharged the following afternoon, I took her somewhere else.
Not home.
My sister Rebecca’s house.
Only after Mason and Lily were upstairs playing did Mom finally sit across from me and say:
“Chloe doesn’t want me there.”
“I know.”
“No, David. You don’t.”
Her voice trembled.
The food was only part of it.
Chloe controlled when she could use the kitchen.
Limited how long she could sit with the children.
Told her she was “confusing” Lily by answering questions Chloe thought were hers to handle.
If Eleanor corrected Chloe, dinner disappeared.
If she called me during work hours, Chloe stood nearby.
Once, when Mom tried to tell me privately that something was wrong, Chloe entered the room and asked loudly:
“Are you forgetting what we talked about again?”
Mom stopped.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
She looked ashamed.
“Because of Mason and Lily.”
“What do they have to do with this?”
“Chloe told me if I caused trouble, she’d tell you I was frightening them.”
My mother’s eyes filled.
“She said you’d believe your wife before an old woman who couldn’t remember things anymore.”
“But you can remember.”
“I know.”
That sentence stopped me.
Chloe had been using the possibility of cognitive decline before there was any diagnosis.
Not because Mom was confused.
Because if I could be convinced she was confused—
May you like
anything she said about Chloe became easier to dismiss.
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