Page 144 of The Love Operation

She eyes me, her face going wary. “What conversation are you talking about?” Each word is careful now.

“The one we had before I went to make coffee.”

She stares into my eyes. Something’s clearly happening inside her head, but I can’t read what. Then her eyes close, lashes sweeping the tops of her cheeks. “You didn’t just get here?” She’s not telling me. She’s asking me.

“No.” The word comes out with anguish, with the realization that this is not a joke. But my mind is having trouble coming to terms with what’s happening here.

My mother can’t remember.

But how can that be?

“Do you remember me telling you about the study? Or Isaac? Or Benedict? Or the incident I had in the OR?”

She stills. “Something happened in the OR? Is everything okay?”

My jaw goes slack. I can’t hold it up anymore. I stare at her. “I . . . I already told you. Just before I went inside.”

Her eyes flutter shut again, and she turns to the table. She places the pottery down and sits.

The yard is oddly still. No breeze. No bugs. No birds. The whole of nature realizes the impact of this.

I sit because my legs won’t hold me up anymore. They feel alien at the end of my torso.

My mother doesn’t remember.

“There’s something I need to tell you,” she whispers.

“Cordelia?” My father’s voice cuts through the stillness from the doorway. “Thought I saw your car—whoa, what happened here?”

He motions toward the broken pottery, then looks at my face—and everything changes.

“What happened?” he says, moving to my mother.

She bats him away. “Apparently Cordelia’s been here for a while, but I can’t remember our conversation.” Her tone is matter-of-fact, exasperated, but she sounds like her.

My dad sighs, and that’s when I understand.

This isn’t news to them. This incident isn’t a shock to them.

They know.

“Let’s sit, okay?” my dad says, surely sensing the vibration under my skin. “It’s all right.”

But it’s not.

I don’t even remember standing, but somehow I’m several feet from the table. I take a step forward, ceramic crunching beneath my feet. My heart pounds so hard it echoes off the damn garden gnomes.

“You knew,” I say.

He meets my eyes. Caught, but not surprised.

“You knew, and you didn’t tell me.”

“Cordelia—”

“How long has this been going on?” I cut him off. My voice is sharp now, realization edging out the disbelief and panic. “How long have you known?”

He takes a slow breath and pinches the bridge of his nose. “We started noticing signs a few months ago. She’d forget little things—keys in the fridge, oddities that weren’t like her. Mild cognitive impairment.”