Read Online Trust No One by Paul Cleave - Free Book Online Page A

you’d take the next maybe thing. You’d sell the house and use the money to bribe your way into any kind of trial at this point—who wouldn’t?
    You told Beverly it felt like The Very Hungry Caterpillar was about to make its way through your mind, leaving holes everywhere it went as it gorged itself on memories before turning into a butterfly and taking flight. You told her you were starting to think of the man you’re going to become as The Jerry Replacement, a version of you that would function on different levels, and you were worried about the kind of person he would be. A kind man? Short tempered? How many of the same qualities would you share with him?
    She said there would be good days and there would be bad. Take from that what you will, Future Jerry.
    You can’t remember what the fourth stage of grief is. You were going to look it up online earlier, but, eye-roll, you can’t remember the password on your computer. It’ll come to you soon, no doubt, and if not Sandra will know it. She knows everything—you just don’t want her to know you can’t remember it.
    Beverly was here for three hours. It was a long day, and she gave you both some worst-case scenarios and some best-case scenarios. It’s possible you could be in a nursing home within the next few months. Can you believe that? A few months! She stressed that was the worst case, but the fact that at forty-nine you got Alzheimer’s, well, isn’t that already worst case? You shook her hand when she left, and Sandra exchanged hugs with her. When she was gone, you sat down with Sandra and between you decided it was time to tell Eva. She’s coming over for dinner tomorrow night. She’ll ask to pass the salt, and you’ll say sure, and by the way I’m dying. Jesus . . . there’s no way to tell her in a way that isn’t going to devastate her. You can imagine her sitting the same way she did with your mother, reading To Kill a Mockingbird to you , pouring a glass of water and asking you every now and then if you’re okay.
    So it’s good news, bad news time. Good news—you’re still sane and you still know your name! Perhaps all good news can be rhymed in the future. And you found your credit card—it was in the yard. See? A perfect rhyme. Except it wasn’t in the yard. You’d used it to buy cat food the other day from the supermarket and left it there by accident. They called the following day to let you know.
    Bad news—you don’t have a cat. It died six years ago.

He wakes up thinking about the money. Large bundles of cash stuffed into duffle bags, two security guards tied up and left in the vault, the bank manager with a hell of a concussion, and a future of beaches and pussy and maybe he’ll even get a tattoo to celebrate. After all, it’s not every day a job like this can be pulled off—they’ve gotten away with 3.4 million in cash, divided up three ways—he can retire on a million dollars and blow the leftover on partying.
    He sits up on the edge of his bed and looks at his wrist where there is no watch and he wonders what the time is, where they’ve stopped, and all he wants to do is get back to the cash, which they buried beneath the farmhouse, which will stay buried until things die down. The key is to be patient. There is a book on the bed next to him. Vault. It’s written by a guy named Henry Cutter, and the name is familiar, but he can’t place how, even though it feels like it ought to be important. He stands up and stretches, then takes off his robe and pulls on a T-shirt and . . .
    And his name is Jerry Grey. He is fifty years old and an Alzheimer’s patient. He is an author and not a bank robber. Vault is one of his books. This is a nursing home. This is his life.
    The news is so sudden he has to sit back down on the bed. There is no farmhouse. No cash. No security guards. Just madness. He looks to the bedside table, but his journal isn’t there, nor is it on the bookshelf where there are other copies of his