Page 100 of Feels Like Forever

“I’m really glad to hear that,” he says, “because you both make Sundays my favorite days, too.”

Rae cheerfully stabs some more eggs with her fork.

Landon cheerfully takes a bite of bacon.

And I cheerfully marvel at the two of them before I go back to eating, too, so we can really get our Super Fun Sunday started.

After we eat, he asks if we want to go see Lolly with him. We do, so I send Rae to her room so she can change clothes while I help clean up the kitchen. Then I go change, too, and brush teeth and hair with Rae, and get ponytails fixed up for us. When we’re ready to go, Landon offers to drive us so we can listen to that song from earlier. Sounds good to me, so we head out into the cloudy morning to grab Rae’s booster seat from my car and hit the road.

The song turns out to be awesome. Hearing it through a stereo is better than through a phone—I can really enjoy the lyrics, the singer’s voice, the melody. A handful of different parts give me chills, but I think my favorite is the build-up before the last chorus. The ramping up of the words and emotion and instruments…wow.

However, a damper is put on our morning when we get to Quiet Springs and find Lolly happy but doing particularly badly in the memory department. She seems to recognize Landon but not me or Rae, and every few minutes, she asks a question she has already asked.

The fourth time she wants to know how old Rae is, Landon looks at me sadly. Even Rae seems unsure of what to do at this point; she knows not to grow outwardly impatient with Lolly, but she’s clearly becoming worn.

“She’s seven,” Landon says as he tries to smile at Lolly. “And, uh…she has a Halloween party coming up at school, so we need to go buy her a costume.” His smile falters. “I—I guess we’ll go ahead and—and go do that. Let you finish your show.” He nods at the TV she turned down when we came in.

“Oh, all right! Well, thank you for coming to see me! It really put me in a good mood, honey. I worried you’d never come back.”

Rae and I wave our goodbyes and Landon, looking happier than before, says, “Of course I came back. I love you. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

“Okay. Love you, too, Mason.”

The name seems to hit him in the face.

He takes a step back and stares at her, his happiness shot all the way down.

Istare athim, my heart wrenching in my chest.

Mason is his dad’s name.

Has she been thinking all this time that…?

As his shoulders slump, his look of astonishment turns into one of stung sorrow.

And I know she can’t help it—I know she doesn’t realize what she’s said, how she’s made him feel—but annoyance with her surges through me.

I just…Ihatethis for him. All of it. I hate every minute he’s been hurt by this disease. As if he hasn’t already suffered enough, now he’s being mistaken for his piece-of-shit dad, who abandoned him—if she thinks she’s looking at her son, where does she figurehiskid is? Does she thinkRaeis his kid? Has she forgottenagainthat Landon exists?

Feeling ill and determined to get him out of this room, I step over to him and wrap my hands around his wrist.

“Okay, come on,” I murmur more steadily than I thought I could. “Come on. It’s time to go.” Glancing over at Rae, I tilt my head toward the door. “Rae? Costume time, babe.”

She looks utterly perplexed, not having missed Landon being called the wrong name, but she doesn’t say anything. She just follows me as I shuffle him away from Lolly.

Outside, it’s begun to rain, so I take one hand off of Landon to hold on to Rae. Even though we walk faster to the car than we were walking indoors, he’s still noticeably dragging.

It’s only after we’re settled in our seats that I realize he might not feel like driving.

“Hey, I’ll drive if you need me to,” I tell him. We’re all already buckled in, but he has only just now turned the key, so it’s not too late to switch seats.

He shakes his head, looking at where he’s plugging his phone in, not at me.

“Landon….”

He puts his phone down. “I don’t need you to drive.”

“I really—”

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