Page 25 of The Cost of Forgetting You

The symptoms. The timelines. The fact that it’s genetic—something I suspected but for the very first time hits me square in the chest and steals my breath. One day it could be me. In an instant the years I’ve spent in limbo, waiting for my life to start, all to spare my mom’s feelings—they feel wasted. And now? How could I subject someone to loving me, knowing what could possibly lie dormant in my DNA?

All the more reason to keep everyone at a distance. Less to forget, less to grieve when the time finally comes.

Hours later, as the sound of tires turning over our driveway reaches my ears, I’m numb. But not in a bad way. In a way that makes me feel powerful. I’ve pushed the fear deep down inside and replaced it with knowledge. With a plan. I know what’s coming, as much as anyone can when it comes to this kind of diagnosis, and I’m going to do everything in my power to take care of my dad, the way I’d want someone to care for me.

But first I have to call my mom.

Unsurprisingly it goes straight to voicemail. It’s not the first time she’s given me the silent treatment, and it certainly won’t be the last.

“Hi, Mom. I know you’re probably still upset… and I get it. I do.” Dad’s voice drifts down the hall, followed by Roberta’s laughter. I bite the inside of my cheek. “I’m going to have to stay for… well, for a while. I don’t know exactly how long. Dad needs me. I don’t expect you to understand, but just know that I’d do it for you, too. I have to push the past aside. I hope you can, too. For me.”

I close my eyes. Empty my thoughts. It’s the only way to function. The only way to get through.

“I need you to mail me my extra monitor and a few other things. I’ll send you the list and transfer some money for shipping. I hope—I hope you can forgive me. I love you.”

I end the call and fire off a quick text with the list of things I need to make a life here for the foreseeable future. Then I set my phone aside and stand. Knowledge is heavy. It’s up to me whether I crumble beneath it or get strong enough to bear it.

Aimless pain is useless, but this I can work with. I have direction. A plan. It’s more than I had this morning when I woke up, that’s for sure.

I hear the rustling of bags as I round the corner. Roberta unloads the groceries while my dad directs her. She’s chattering away about her granddaughter who recently started playing soccer. When Dad tells her to put the sugar in the cabinet with the cups, she course-corrects to the pantry without missing a beat.

“She made her first goal and she was so proud, but”—Roberta bites her bottom lip, holding back tears—“it was for the other team!”

Dad lets out a belly laugh, head thrown back, and I pause to take it in. It doesn’t matter what happened between him and Mom. How badly it hurt me. What’s done is done. All that matters is making sure I have this version of him for as long as possible. If that means owing Truett Parker, then my pride be damned.

“Hey, Dad?”

He sucks in a deep breath and turns to me, eyes bright with amusement. “Yes, sweet pea?”

I hold up a jump drive, the result of my hours of research and a subscription to a Montessori-based dementia care podcast. “Do you have a printer I could use? And a laminator?”

Roberta runs the printer, humming her approval with every sheet, while my dad and I spend thirty minutes digging through his office. He only gets frustrated once, but this time when he lets out a slew of insults, I barely flinch. Eventually we find the laminator and, beside it, several unopened packages of laminating sheets. I carry both into my room along with the stack of papers and clear a space on the top of the dresser. With some effort, my suitcase is moved to the center of the floor, and the plug it was blocking is free to use.

While the first sheet runs through the laminator, I turn to my luggage and begin unpacking.

Chapter Eight

Henry

January 10th, 1997

It wasn’t my idea for Lucy to sneak out in the dead of winter. Not that winter means much more than a slight chill in the air around here, but still. Lying low in the holly bushes outside the parsonage, shrouded in darkness, I see a flash of golden hair reflecting the full moon’s light. She moves across the ground like a dancer, barely touching the earth. The sigh of her footsteps against the dead leaves could just as easily be the wind. Or the breath that escapes my lips when I see her creep past the last window at the edge of the house, then step fully into view.

Lucy Barlow isn’t just beautiful; she’s brave, too.

I heeded her dad’s warning. As much as I wanted Lucy for myself, more than anything I wanted her happy. And if leaving her alone kept Pastor Timothy off her back, then leave her alone I would.

That didn’t stop me from looking. And after that day at the piano, Lucy looked back.

Stolen glances at first. Eye contact that could’ve been mistaken as accidental had she not flushed red and glanced down at her toes the first dozen times it happened. Then one morning, while serenading the congregation with yet another of her father’s favorite old hymns, her gaze found mine and held it. By the end of the song, I was sure she’d meant it only for me.

Then came the notes. Slipped between the slats in my locker door at school, she addressed them to “The next Mozart” and signed each one “Love, your co-composer.”

I thumbed the word love so many times on that very first note that it became a blur of ink. It didn’t matter, though. By seventh period, the words were impressed upon my heart.

Most of the time we talked about music. Her secret love for TLC and my weird obsession with classical composers and Phil Collins, a combination she could never quite wrap her head around. Occasionally she’d ask about things I was doing on the weekends with my friends. She never seemed to have any plans with hers, a group of girls who were daughters of the deacons at church. Rarely did I mention my parents. Even more rarely did she mention hers.

I thought nothing of it when I wrote to her this morning letting her know we’d be going to the field tonight to hang out. All day I checked my locker between classes and found nothing. I tried to tamp down my disappointment, reassuring myself she was simply busy. The new semester was ramping up, and things were bound to get in the way. Still, sadness plagued me.

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