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Dementia was an unfair illness, and while I was thankful to still have my dad here, to sit beside him, I knew I was being selfish in that gratitude. Dad wouldn’t have wanted this—Mom would surely not have wanted this for him. But he still remembered Maddie, I reminded myself. Even if he did think she was in high school. It was hard not to wonder how I’d been erased so completely from his mind while my sister remained, but I had enough things to worry about—I tried not to fixate on that.
“Maddie mentioned she’d stopped by,” I said, and that earned me a smile.
“She’s a good girl,” he said. Then he turned to me, eyeing me with suspicion. “How do you know my daughter?”
I sighed. I didn’t want to upset him. “I’ve met her once or twice is all. Just happened to see her out running errands today.” It wasn’t quite a lie.
He nodded. “I miss her,” he said, and I wondered what logic was at work in that mind of his, how he categorized having a daughter he believed to be a teenager while he stayed here, in this place. None of it made sense, and the degradation of what remained of his active memory was heartbreaking.
I sat with him for a while after that, talking about the weather, the food he’d had today, and the cat who prowled through the common space between the little fenced patios. We stayed on the surface, and that’s where Dad was still able to participate. When I left, he thanked me for coming, and I said goodbye, both to the quiet man sitting on the patio, and to the idea of a father I knew I’d never really see again.
Loss felt like a theme in my life, and I drove back up the mountainside wondering how much more loss I could survive.
* * *
I arrivedhome to find a lamp knocked over, a work boot in pieces in the middle of the living room floor, and the house a general state of destruction.
“Matilda, you’re supposed to be watching these guys,” I told the big dog, who had the grace to look sheepish about the havoc her crew of tiny mutts was causing now that they were mobile and curious.
The dogs were almost four weeks old and they were becoming way too much for me to handle. I’d tried to puppy-proof the living room, taking out the rug and laying out newspaper in one corner, removing the pillows from the couch and the television remotes from the coffee table (I’d learned that one the hard way). Still, they were getting bigger, they were very curious, and they were bored being in the house while I was at work.
I’d fenced a part of the area between the two houses so I could take them all out and let them play, but I couldn’t leave them there during the day. The mountain lion was still camped out on the hillside beyond, and the rangers were jumping through hoops trying to trap it. A few puppies would probably be too much temptation for it to resist, and I thought the dogs might even be the reason the cat hadn’t moved on.
“Come on, guys.” I herded the dogs outside into the pen to relieve themselves and play, and sat down crosslegged just inside the closed fence, petting them and letting them climb all over me.
Their soft little bodies and curious cold noses were everywhere, and it was impossible to brood over the fog of confusion inside my head while they were in my arms, so I let myself escape for a few minutes as they crowded around me, my legs forming challenging mountains for them to climb, and my hands and Matilda’s nose always nearby when they got into trouble or toppled over, their fuzzy little butts wagging with excitement.
“You’ve got your hands full, I see,” Harper’s voice came from behind me, and I turned to see her approaching. We hadn’t spoken in weeks, though she and Tuck had come down to the fire pit occasionally. Always together. Part of me regretted bringing him up here, while part of me thought it would be for the best if something developed between them, as much as it hurt to imagine.
“They’re getting too big for me to keep.”
She sighed, smiling. “I wish I could take one.”
“You can,” I told her. “Take three.”
Her laugh was light and easy, and I realized how much I’d missed it these last weeks. “Not sure where I’ll be living or anything,” she said. “In Austin, I mean.”
I nodded, the thought of her leaving twisting inside me like a knife.
“I wanted to let you know I’m going to be gone a couple days,” she said, her eyes on mine, making me feel like words were being spoken that had nothing to do with the ones coming from her lips. “Tuck is taking me to the airport tonight.”
Of course he was.
“Okay,” I managed.
She watched me, and for a minute I thought she might say something else. I felt my heart reaching, hoping maybe she’d bring up whatever might be between us again, confirm that maybe there was still something there, though I didn’t know why I wanted that scar opened when we’d been successfully avoiding it for weeks now. Still, ignoring something didn’t make it go away, as it turned out, and as much as I knew it was for the best, I couldn’t help imagining us together again. I spent a lot of time imagining it actually, remembering it. I thought of the slip of her skin against mine, the softness of her lips, the strength in her legs—and the way she put me in my place when I’d initially tried to run. Maybe that was what I missed the most, the way she refused to give me up to my own demons.
“Okay,” she said finally, her voice flat. “Well, I guess I’ll see you when I get back. Tuck has the list of shots I need for the movie at the Inn. We can start shooting that part when I get back if you can go over the plans with him.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Bye,” she said, her voice barely a breath.
One of the dogs sank tiny teeth into my hand just then and I turned back to pull him off. When I looked back to say goodbye to Harper, she was already gone. I sat with the puppies for ten more minutes, but it was impossible to find any joy inside me now. Harper was leaving and I hated it.
Chapter 14
HARPER
