“The Caregiver” Read online

Cynthia was sleeping when Tracy and Tate got to the mid-sized bedroom on the third floor. She was tucked under layers of a blanket and covers. Only her small, lean head poked out from the bedding; her eyes tranquilly closed as no sound came from her.

  Tracy had already showed Tate the medicine regiment and the list of food and drinks for her mother. So Tracy silently mouthed to Tate that she would head off to work. In similar fashion, Tate mouthed back the acknowledgment and waved the mistress of the house goodbye as she stayed at Cynthia's doorway.

  Tate waited until she heard the front door to the house shut before she started to leisurely, and quietly, stroll around Cynthia's room, looking at all the old photographs. Most of them where in black and white, and most of the photos were of family members. Some were standard-sized while others were mere inches in dimension. A few of the photos showed Cynthia when she was young; decades before her stroke that would rob the use of her legs. Young-Cynthia, standing on her own two youthful legs with a car; or another of young-Cynthia with a young, handsome man—undoubtedly, the same man that one day would become Tracy's father, Tate guessed by the facial features of the young man, when she compared it to pictures of an elderly man with very similar features—just ripened by several decades! It seemed so alien to Tate that the young woman in those pictures was the same personage before her now; swaddled and quietly sleeping while the rest of the world outside those walls churned out changes.