Getaway Car [HS]

Chapter Forty-Two

The whole car ride over, which ended up being a little over an hour, he briefed her on where they were going and why they were going there. As soon as the call dropped, he was quick to reassure her that it wasn't Leo or Garrett calling upon them for their services. She watched in confusion as he stood up from the bed and began getting dressed, digging through the dresser drawers for a clean set of casual clothes as he told her to do the same.

It wasn't until she stood from the bed and began dressing beside him, slipping on a loose pair of jeans and one of his vintage band tees, that he offered any form of an explanation for the interruption. Apparently, it was the same place or person that called him the night on the race track when he had a "family emergency", the only difference this time being that she was allowed to peek behind the curtain and know what was going on.

Harry stuffed his gun back into the holster he switched from his dirty pants to his new ones, saying to her as he searched the room for his backpack, "My mother's in a nursing home. Whenever they call, I go. M'sorry to cut our Christmas short, but they called with good news. I'll explain it all in the car. C'mon."

With that, he grabbed her arm by the wrist and pulled her along to follow him. They made it all the way out of the apartment, into the elevator, and to the top level of the garage where he always kept his cars parked before he proceeded with his promised explanation. It was all a bit jarring, honestly. To receive such pivotal information in a matter of seconds, all while her head was still reeling from the night they shared, dizzied her.

They were about ten minutes into the ride when he spoke again.

"She has Alzheimer's," he said, cutting her a sorrowful look before looking back at the road. "When I was eighteen, she needed to be put into full-time care. S'why I had to borrow so much money from Leo, I couldn't afford any of it at the time. I mean, what eighteen-year-old living in the states can?" The music playing from the phone he plugged into the aux cord filled the gaps in speech as she stared at him with watering eyes. "Anyway, they called and said she had a fall last month. Broke her hip and needed surgery, that's why I left so fast. But, this time, it's good. The nurse said she's been lucid for hours. It never usually happens for any longer than thirty minutes with her, so by the time I get there, she doesn't even know who I am."

That's what led her here, standing hand in hand with him in the lobby of the nursing home with her head spinning from the overload of information dumped on her.

That was what Leo had to keep him in it, wasn't it? It didn't make sense to her why he stayed if he was so close to killing himself as a way out at one point, but, now, everything clicks. If he killed himself, his mother would be left with no one to pay for her care, and if he left...It's the same situation she faced with Alanis. It's Leo's best tactic at getting people to obey him—find out who they love and keep them under the threat of death or torture at all times should the person working under him step out of line.

From what she knows of Alzheimer's and Dementia patients, terminal lucidity is often a sign of death waiting right around the corner, but she doesn't dare to say that to him. How could she ruin this ray of sunshine that has found its way into his life after years of perpetual night?

He squeezes her hand hard in his, tapping his foot against the tiled floor to the anxious beat of his heart, and keeps searching down the long hallway for the nurse that said she'd go and ask her if she wanted to see her visitors.

"It's been, like, seven years since she remembered me," he says with a smile growing on his face. "Do y'think she'll remember me now?"

Harley rests her chin on his shoulder and looks up at him with a smile to match his own.

"If they're saying she's lucid, I don't see why she wouldn't."

It's difficult for her to enjoy the happiness emanating from him. All she can think of is how young he was when it all began and how terrified he must've been. He told her on the car ride over that his dad never spoke to them again once she got the diagnosis, leaving him to handle everything in his absence, and it made her heart snap in two. He was just a boy. He's never had the chance to truly live as an adult, every second has been consumed by the debt, Leo, and murdering people against his will, and it enrages her. If the promise of his imminent downfall weren't already planned out, she'd likely steal his gun and hunt their boss down herself for stealing his life away.