“I just wish I’d spent more time with you. That’s all.”

“Oh, hush!” She crosses her arms over her chest, her eyes narrowed at me. “I’m not dead. Not even dying. Now stop talking as if I am. It may be unfortunate for you, but I have plenty of years left. Now, let’s talk about that girlfriend of yours. Where is she?”

I rub the three days of growth on my jaw with my knuckles and choose my words carefully, knowing it’s important not to push her. “You know you’ve met Becca before…”

“I have?”

“Yeah. Your last birthday. She was there.”

Chaz sighs, her shoulders dropping. “The nurse said I might have problems remembering things…”

“It’s okay,” I soothe. “It’s not important.”

Becca enters the room, her father following behind her. I turn to them, the same time Chaz gasps. “Dan, what are you doing here?”

* * *

I find out from Becca that Dan is her birth grandfather—information provided by her dad who’s made an effort to openly ignore my presence. I sit with Chaz, he stands on the other side of the room, and Becca seems lost—floating between us.

We sit in silence, and we wait.

Dr. Richards arrives, introducing himself first to Chaz and then to the rest of us. She gets taken to a different room—a room only family members can access. And considering Chaz doesn’t realize she actually has family here, she goes it alone, something I try to fight. But she calms me quickly, tells me to stop acting like she’s on her deathbed. And so I sit in the room, the silence deafening, the walls closing in on me and I wait some more. Seconds. Minutes. Hours tick by.

Martin gets a phone call.

I get eight.

Becca’s now refusing to make eye contact with either of us.

Mom shows up, papers in hand, asking me to sign contracts to things I can’t even think about. She senses my mood, and now she’s part of the silence.

Part of the wait.

Tommy calls.

Becca smiles.

I don’t.

Because she’s too far away and I want her next to me. I want her in my arms and I want to go back to this morning when touching her didn’t seem like a crime.

Mom says, “Maybe just look at the contracts, Josh. Get your mind off things.”

“Stop.” It comes out harsh, but I don’t apologize. Right now, I don’t need her here as my manager, I need her here as my mom.

Dr. Richards returns, no Chaz in sight. “We need to talk.”

16

—Becca—

There’s a ringing in my ears so loud it almost drowns out Dr. Richards’s words. After what Josh had said, I was expecting the diagnosis. I guess I just hadn’t prepared myself for it. And definitely not to this extent.

Frontal Lobe Dementia.

The three words replay in my head, over and over, while the ringing gets louder and louder.

Apparently, the CT scans they’d done showed signs of multiple strokes, ones that went undetected, most likely taking course in Grams’s sleep. It could’ve been happening for months, but no one was around to see her decline. Dr. Richards continues to go through the results of the tests, speaking words that I’ve only read about since Josh mentioned dementia. My eyes sting, tears threatening to fall and I look over at my dad, a person who’s been there through my ups and downs over the past two years. I search for comfort, for relief, but what I see is nothing. Not a damn thing.

“So cure it!” Josh yells, fist thumping on Grams’s food tray.

I flinch at the sound, shocked at his response.

“Josh,” his mom reprimands.

“There’s currently no cure for dementia,” the doctor says, grabbing a chair from the corner of the room and sitting opposite me.

Josh’s fists ball, his jaw tense, and I close my eyes, preparing myself for a repeat of the anger I’d once witnessed. “So find one.”

A sob escapes in an unfamiliar sound. Sound. I made a sound.

I choke on a gasp, my eyes snapping open to see everyone watching me, their bodies frozen, their eyes as wide as mine. Josh is the first to move, first to alter the still image my eyes alone had captured. He stands quickly, pulling me into his embrace. “It’s okay,” he whispers, his hands stroking my hair. “It’s okay.” He repeats the same words, the occasional apology thrown in, while I stifle my cries into his chest. His heart pounds against my cheek, his body trembling. Then he pulls back, holding my face in his hands while wiping my tears with his thumbs. “Look at me, Becs,” he asks. So I do. Because right now, he’s all I know. All I have. “We’re going to get through this. You and me. Together, okay?”

I nod, choosing to believe his words—even if his words are lies.

He takes my hand and leads me to the chair he’d just vacated and squats next to me, his hands on mine hiding their trembles.

“I spoke with your grandmother, Becca,” Dr. Richards says. “I needed to have the conversation with her while she was still coherent. Because of her mental state, we had to discuss a power of attorney. Do you know what that means?”

I nod at the same time Josh says, “It’s someone to speak on her behalf and make decisions for her when she can’t.” He looks over my shoulder at his mother sitting in a chair next to me. “Like you were with Dad, right?”

Suddenly, his reaction, his anger, all of it makes sense. I see the fear in his eyes the moment they meet mine. A flashback of the past—of a scared, broken boy who thought he had to take on the world alone. But he didn’t have to. Not then. Not now.

Dr. Richards speaks, forcing us to break our stare. “We’re going to start Chazarae on some medication. It’ll be ongoing. I’ll need to keep seeing her on a routine basis, and because of how severe the dementia is, it’ll be a good idea to look at alternative living arrangements for her.”

“Like a home?” Dad asks, finding his voice for the first time since we left the house.

“She has a home,” Josh says. “She’s not going anywhere.” I can hear the frustration in his tone, feel the anger simmering deep within him.

“We need to stay calm,” says his mother. I know she’s trying to help, but going by the tick in Josh’s jaw, she’s doing the opposite.

“Look.” Dr. Richards sets Grams’s chart aside and clasps his hands on his lap. “I know this is tough for you all. I often see family members of patients whose reactions are the same as yours. But there are a lot of facilities around, nice ones, that will look after her better than she can look after herself. She needs constant care and supervision.”

Josh shakes his head. “I’ll quit skating.”

“You will not,” his mom snaps.

My fingers work fast on my phone, my panic rising. “I’ll quit college.”

“No, you won’t,” Dad and Josh say in unison. Great, at least they agree on something.

I type again. “You can’t quit, Josh. You’ve worked too hard to give up skating.”

His eyes narrow at me. “Yeah, well you’ve survived too much to give up college!” The loudness of his voice makes me flinch. He takes a breath, trying to find a calm. “Becca, I’ve made enough money to support her. I’ll do it.” Josh turns back to the doctor. “What do I need to do? My dad—we had to do things around the house so his wheelchair…” His voice fades, his throat bobbing with his swallow. “Do I need to fix—”