Page 8 of The Cost of Forgetting You

I duck into my car and start the engine back up. The leather of the steering wheel sears my palms, but my hands no longer shake. My dad is sick, I remind myself. I’m here to take care of him. To get some answers if I can. I know how to do this. To be the responsible one, the voice of reason. The life raft. I can’t drown if I’m focused on saving someone else.

Those words cycle through my mind over and over for the next ten minutes. A steady heartbeat as I drive down more familiar roads, past homes of girls I used to have sleepovers with but haven’t heard from since I left town, and finally turn by an overgrown magnolia tree whose blooms blot out its leaves like full moons.

Nestled amid a grove of live oaks, my childhood home appears. The white paint is faded in some places. My rope swing and the branch it hung from are missing from the tree out front, a large oak with a trunk the size of a grain silo. Probably rotted or blown away in a hurricane. Or maybe Dad cut it down so he didn’t have to look at it every day and remember me.

My heart lurches at the thought. It took me a week to gather the courage to tell Mom I was leaving. Another to actually get my ass in the car. How much could things have changed in those two weeks? Will he recognize me? Will he remember who I am?

I shake my head. Everything I’ve seen online says that’s not how this disease works. I’ve got time. I’ve got to have time.

Time for what, I don’t know. Time for answers? An apology?

From him or from me? I swallow back bile and put the car in park.

Cows call out from the fields beyond the house. I don’t glance in their direction. Truett may have been helping Dad in my absence, but I’m here now. And I’ve got this. He can go back to his farm and his mother and leave my family the hell alone.

I park behind Dad’s silver Altima. As I get out of my car and amble closer, I realize it looks like it’s been in an accident. The hood and front bumper are caved in. Angry black streaks peel back the paint along the driver’s side doors. I scrape a shaking hand through my hair, blowing out a whistle as I take in the extent of the damage. I’d be shocked if it even runs.

Beside it, there’s a baby-blue pickup truck. Newer, by the looks of it, or restored to look new. A replacement for the totaled car?

The floorboards of the porch creak underfoot. Several pairs of shoes, including mud-stained Converse, sit discarded by the door. Mom’s swing sways gently in the hot breeze. It brings with it the scent of magnolias and river water, as well as cattle from the Parkers’ farm.

I drop my backpack to the ground and school my face into a neutral expression before knocking on the door.

It swings away from my fist in a rush. Suddenly Dad is standing right in front of me for the first time in so long. My heart seizes and my eyes burn with unshed tears, but I force it all down. Because it’s not about me right now. It can’t be.

When his gaze lands on me, I brace myself for the look of confusion that filled Nana’s eyes in those final years. Logically I know it takes time to get there. But fear knows no logic. And right now I’m a little girl, afraid her dad has already forgotten her. That he did long before he got sick.

The crow’s feet around his eyes have deepened. Gray has started to appear, dense at his temples and sporadic in the rest of his brown hair. He’s handsome; I’ve always thought so. My classmates used to tease me about it. He smiles, and that same front tooth of his is still crooked. Still familiar, when so much of his life is foreign to me now.

Tears well in his blue eyes. “Delilah, you came.”

I exhale. My clenched fists unfurl. Be calm, I tell myself. You don’t want to overwhelm him.

“Of course I did,” I whisper. Though I suspect, behind Mom, he was second most sure that I wouldn’t.

When he opens his arms, expression hesitant but hopeful, I crack. A single tear. It might as well be a torrent. For a moment all the anger and hurt dissipates like morning fog burned off by the sun. All I feel is relief that he remembers.

Because as long as he remembers, there’s still time.

We embrace in the threshold with my backpack at our feet.

Chapter Three

Delilah

“Come inside, come inside.” Dad steps back and waves me in. “You must be tired! What’s that drive, nine hours or so?”

I pause mid shoe removal and blink at him. “You know how far it is?”

He winces, hooks his hand on the nape of his neck. “I’ve been to Nancy and Greg’s house a time or two. It’s a long drive, but at least it’s scenic.”

The bruise on my heart aches as though he’s pressed a finger right into it. Why didn’t you come to see me, then? I want to ask. But I don’t, because what difference would it make?

I finish removing my white sneakers and leave them next to his black Converse, a little yin and yang there on the porch. When I step over the threshold, the honey-colored floor creaks under my weight. Same board as always. You can’t come or go in this house without being announced.

“I see you haven’t fixed the floorboard,” I tease.

“I’ll get to it next week.”

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