Page 131 of The Cost of Forgetting You

I doubt it.

“I never said you were.”

He meets my worried gaze, his own clearer than it’s been in days. Whatever he finds there dissolves the irritation in his voice. His face crumples, regret evident in every fold. “I’m sorry. I-I know she’s gone. I just wanna talk to her.”

I sigh. At the mouth of our driveway, I put the car in park and pull out my phone. Truett followed up his voicemail with a few more texts. Not pressuring or pushing, but merely offering to help when he noticed we stayed at the hospital longer than one day. It doesn’t matter that I don’t respond. He keeps showing up for me. Coming for me. Waiting for me to be ready to be found.

It’s his consistency, his care, that’ll be my undoing, when I finally have time alone to come undone.

As much as I know that cutting things off with Tru is the best thing for everyone involved, it takes every ounce of my strength to ignore the voice that tells me to call Tru right this second and admit I need him to get me through this. To hold me and tell me it’ll all work out. That I’ll make it, because I have to.

But Dad deserves to have one hundred percent of my attention. And Truett deserves better than whatever shell of me is left over when this is done.

I fire off a text, and hope beyond hope that me ignoring the rest doesn’t hurt him as badly as it hurts me.

Me

Finally out of the hospital. Dad wants to visit Lucy. Is that okay?

Truett

He’s welcome any time.

Truett

I made soup.

Truett

I can come by later, once you two are settled?

Me

I’ve got it covered, but thank you anyway.

I lock the phone and put the car back into drive, but not before a silent tear slips from my lashes.

The cemetery is cocooned in an otherworldly quiet. Not silence, per se. The birds still call to one another. The breeze ruffles the leaves here, too. But it’s muted. Delicate. Like nature knows to hold its breath for the souls laid to rest in what was once an empty hilltop meadow. I hold my breath too, as Dad makes his way through the opening in the iron fence. He settles easily into the bench at the foot of Lucy’s plot, like he’s slipping into an old pair of shoes. Familiar and formed perfectly to fit him.

I take the open seat beside him. Cold seeps from the stone bench through my jeans and into my skin. During her visit, Roberta brought a change of clothes and some toiletries for me to freshen up. A godsend, when I was in the middle of my own personal hell.

Fresh flowers are lying at the base of her stone. Beautiful white carnations, like the ones forever memorialized on his ribs. I think of Truett coming here all alone to sit with his mom, and my throat constricts. One day it’ll be me visiting my father. The thought swallows me whole, till it’s all I can see when I look around.

“Thank you, sweet pea.” Dad hums a breath, his gaze locked on Lucy’s stone. I let mine drift closed, afraid I’ll see his name if I allow myself to look again. His shoulder brushes mine, and he sighs. “It’s good to see her.”

He’s calm. The antibiotics helped, though the doctors said his confusion might come and go more frequently as he fully recovers. Still, he’s here now. I can’t think of another time to ask. “How did you two meet?”

“We went to church together.”

My eyes fly open. “You? Church?”

“It was for Nana, mostly. I was in it for the fifteen minutes I got every day after service to play at the baby grand.” He smiles, gaze lost to memory. Sometimes he exists better there than he does in the present, it seems. Like this moment is blurry, but thirty years ago remains in hyper-focus. “Lucy sang in the choir. We didn’t talk for a real long time. Then, one day, she sat down with me and we played some beautiful music together.”

“Did you two date?”

“Oh no, her dad wasn’t having that. I don’t know exactly what his bone to pick with me was. Maybe he could see right through my paper-thin faith, or he saw the hard-on I had for his daughter?—”

“Dad!” I shout before catching myself. I know being a bit too honest is par for the course with dementia, but there are some things you never want to hear your father say aloud. Still, he looks guilty. Embarrassed. So I pat his knee and say, “I’m sorry. Go on.”

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