The Change Up

 

Avon, Massachusetts

Copyright © 2016 by Elley Arden.
All rights reserved.

This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher; exceptions are made for brief excerpts used in published reviews.

Published by

Crimson Romance

an imprint of F+W Media, Inc.

10151 Carver Road, Suite 200

Blue Ash, OH 45242. U.S.A.

www.crimsonromance.com

ISBN 10: 1-4405-9150-4

ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-9150-1

eISBN 10: 1-4405-9151-2

eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-9151-8

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author's imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.

Cover art © iStock/PeopleImages.

To anyone who has ever been touched by the emotional turmoil and destruction of Alzheimer's.

 

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• Title Page
  
• Copyright Page
  
• Dedication
  
• Prologue
  
• Chapter One
  
• Chapter Two
  
• Chapter Three
  
• Chapter Four
  
• Chapter Five
  
• Chapter Six
  
• Chapter Seven
  
• Chapter Eight
  
• Chapter Nine
  
• Chapter Ten
  
• Chapter Eleven
  
• Chapter Twelve
  
• Chapter Thirteen
  
• Chapter Fourteen
  
• Chapter Fifteen
  
• Chapter Sixteen
  
• Chapter Seventeen
  
• Chapter Eighteen
  
• Chapter Nineteen
  
• Acknowledgments
  
• About the Author
  
• More from This Author
  
• Also Available
  

Rachel Reed sat at her sleek black desk in her corner office overlooking city hall, complete with its statue of William Penn, and tried not to worry. Any time your boss came to town it was nerve-racking. This time wasn't any different. At least it shouldn't have been. Nothing had changed since the last time he'd been here. All systems were go on the abandoned warehouse being converted into residential space. Closings were complete on the land assemblage in downtown Philadelphia, and tenants in all ten buildings were being relocated efficiently.

She maniacally strummed her squared-off fingernails on the desk.
Think, think, think.
Was she missing anything? Was there any reason he'd be back in town so soon after his last visit? Had she made a mistake?

She just about shattered the intercom button with an overenthusiastic press as she summoned her executive assistant, Liv Butler, into the office.

“What's up?” Liv asked, bright and confident, like any young and hungry EA should be.

“Something is wrong,” Rachel said, clicking through screen after screen of monthly status reports. “I can feel it. We've met all our objectives, correct?”

“Yep,” Liv said, her face in her tablet. “Wait. Maybe he's coming in for your birthday. The big four-O.”

Rachel looked up in time to see Liv's brows bob in jest and ignored it. Forty wasn't a big deal unless you were using it to measure professional success—as in being able to call yourself a multimillionaire by the time you turned forty. Rachel could do that, so forty could come and go without any fanfare, like all the rest. “My birthday is not for another week,” she said dismissively. “Besides, that's too sentimental a reason for him to come in. We've never had that kind of relationship.”

“Maybe he's retiring.”

Never.
He might've been sixty-five, but he had the focus and determination of a man half his age. “Liv, we're talking about a man who texts me at three a.m. to alter directives and clarify goals. He won't sleep, let alone retire.” Although those texts had been far and few between lately.

Something was definitely wrong.

Rachel spent the next ninety minutes strumming like a madwoman, rereading texts and emails, replaying conversations in her head, trying desperately to come up with something—anything—that would warrant this visit. But everything was perfect on her end … until the intercom sounded again.

“They're here,” Liv said.

They?

What the heck was Rachel in for?

The door opened, and her father walked in, followed by her mother. For as long as Rachel had been heading up the Philadelphia offices of Reed Commercial Real Estate Services, her mother had never stepped foot inside this building.

Maybe the impromptu visit was about her birthday after all. As weird as that would be.

Rachel stood, steadied her stride, muffled her surprise, and gave them the requisite greetings—a handshake for her father, who had been her business mentor and boss since she'd graduated from UPenn what seemed like a lifetime ago, and a hug for her mother, whom she saw once a year at Christmas—if her work schedule permitted. The greetings were even more stilted than usual.

“What brings you to Philadelphia?” she asked, knowing it wasn't business if her mother was in the mix. Jackie Reed preferred defined gender roles. Men worked. Women took care of them. Rachel couldn't think of a more miserable existence.

“Let's sit,” her father said.

Those two little words tilted the world on its axis.

Rachel didn't hesitate to do as she was told. When your boss said jump, you asked how high. When your boss was your father, you didn't have to ask; you already knew. Still, her heart doubled its beat.

Once she was seated behind her desk, she studied her father, who couldn't seem to make eye contact with her. Danny Reed looked well: wrinkle-free skin a healthy shade of pink, salt-and-pepper hair as thick as always, tailored suit coat the perfect fit. When silence stretched on, she turned her attention to Jackie, who appeared every bit as put together as usual: neither a gray hair on her sleekly bobbed head nor a mark on her pancaked and painted face. Flowers and pastels were topped off with pearls. So why the long faces?

“We're sitting,” Rachel said. “Now what?”

“Darling,” Jackie started, finally looking at Rachel, only to be cut off by Danny.

“I have Alzheimer's,” he said.

Rachel's breath hitched. Her father had never been one to beat around the bush. His assuredness and directness had made them all millions. But this time, she wished he'd built up to it.
Alzheimer's.
How was that possible? He looked great. He sounded great.

“Are you sure?” she asked.

“Positive,” her mother said, tears glistening in her eyes, and Rachel had the foreign impulse to get touchy-feely. It didn't have time to flourish, though, because her father took control of the conversation again.

“We have work to do,” he said, and he whipped out the leather-bound legal pad that accompanied him on every business trip.

But Rachel was still stuck on the news.
Alzheimer's.
When did he find out? What were his symptoms? How were they treating the disease?

“The attorneys should be here at four,” he said. “You will have special power of attorney to make business deals on my behalf. These papers”—he slid the legal pad toward her—“detail my wishes. I simply ask that you follow them to a T.”

She stared at the inch-thick stack of typed pages tucked in the inner pocket, her mind reeling. Surely power of attorney was a bit extreme. He sounded fine. He seemed competent.

“Rachel,” her mother said. “Are you okay … with all of this?”

“Of course she's okay.” Danny's brusque tone said the same thing it always did: Rachel was tough. His hand-groomed foot soldier. She could handle anything.

“I'm fine,” Rachel said. “Just processing.”

“Process this,” her father said, tapping the folio again. “Everything you need to know is in there. I'll help as much as I can, but before it's too late, you need to have the legal power to execute these plans without my signature.”

It made sense, except none of it made sense. He still didn't look like a man dealing with Alzheimer's disease. “Dad …” She paused as she leafed through the thick stack of pages.

And then something caught her eye. “You want me to sell the baseball team?” Oh, how she'd bit her tongue when she'd discovered three Christmases ago her father was considering a multimillion-dollar vanity project to bring independent baseball to her hometown of Arlington, Pennsylvania. The only thing that had kept her quiet at the time was her belief he would come to his senses and see how owning a barely professional baseball team in a league that had no affiliation with the MLB wasn't a good investment.

“But they haven't even had their first season.” He was asking her to sell a team on speculation? She was a commercial real estate broker, not a magician.

More details flashed at her from the pages in her father's notebook. She was going to have to spearhead the remaining preparations for the inaugural season? “Dad,” she said again, “I don't know anything about running a baseball team.”

She'd been to her fair share of sporting events thanks to company season tickets and colleagues who needed to be schmoozed, and baseball was by far her favorite because of the atmosphere and the zen-like pace of the game, but enjoying the game was a far cry from understanding the business.

“You won't have to run it. The personnel we hire will run it. They are all listed in the folder.” He sighed, a rare show of weakness, and she felt ridiculous for worrying about her workload when he was facing … Alzheimer's.

That word pulled the proverbial rug from underneath her.

“It's a lot,” he continued. “I know it is. But it's probably the last thing I'm ever going to ask of you.”

Rachel hated the lump that formed in her throat, hated that she couldn't think of confident words to displace it. She nodded.

“It's not the hereditary kind,” her mother said suddenly. “So that's good news. Dr. Rictor said you and Helen Anne only have a slight increase in risk.”

What a lovely thought. Not that on some level Rachel wasn't already worrying about it, but talking about it made it all the more real.
A slight increase in risk.
That was supposed to make her feel better.

It didn't. So she did what she always did when emotions threatened to swallow her whole. She looked at her father and, with a definitive nod and a slap of her hand to the leather-bound folder, said, “I can handle this. You have my word.”

Rachel looked at the magazine-worthy house in which she'd been raised looming up before her and beat back the apprehension that accompanied her on every trip to Arlington. It felt especially funny being here in late February. Strange even. There were no evergreen wreaths or red bows on the Georgian-style windows, no garland winding around the thick pillars. In fact, the huge white house looked … lifeless.

She swallowed against the lump that had plagued her for more than a month now, ever since her parents' impromptu trip to Philadelphia, and pushed out of her BMW ready to work. Unlike the occasional Christmas visit, this trip was about business. She didn't need to be apprehensive about that. On the contrary, she needed to be focused, so they could make the most out of this face-to-face meeting and she could get back to the work that awaited her in Philadelphia.

Once Rachel was on the porch, she rang the bell, but when no one answered, she wondered if it was broken. She knocked. Then decided she should knock louder. Finally, she jiggled the handle, figuring the fourteen years she'd lived here as a child entitled her to let herself in.