Page 14

Shame flickers in his eyes that it took him a second to recognize me, but what he doesn’t understand is that he eventually did, and that’s the best I can ask for. It still means progress even though he thinks he failed. Because three years ago, after the car accident that took my mother’s life, he never would have recovered that fast and pulled me from his memory. The therapy is working.

That wasn’t a step back, just a stutter.

"It’s okay, Dad. You remembered. It just took a second."

He nods and then glances up at the picture of the three of us from my high school graduation on his dresser.

"Tomorrow’s the anniversary of when I met your mother," he says, and it warms my heart that no matter what else he forgets, he never forgets her. "Did I ever tell you how we met?"

I smile and place the box of cookies beside him. I remembered their anniversary, which is why I bought cookies from her favorite bakery today.

"Yes, but why don’t you tell me again over some cookies?"

He smiles when he reads the stamped logo on the white bakery box, then opens it carefully, like he’s handling something fragile. His big hands—still strong, even if his mind has become a revolving door—lift out a chocolate chip cookie.

"She was painting," he says, like that explains everything.

I laugh softly. "Of course she was."

He points the cookie at me. "Not in some little studio either. Out on the promenade in Villefranche-sur-Mer with the sea behind her and sunlight everywhere. She had this straw hat on and a scarf tied around her ponytail, and she was standing in front of an easel like she belonged there more than the boats did."

Even though I’ve heard this story a dozen times, I settle in deeper.

"I was twenty-four and stupid," he goes on. "Thought I was sophisticated because I’d spent six months backpacking through Europe after college and could order wine without pointing at the menu. Your mother clocked me for exactly what I was in under ten seconds."

That makes me smile. It sounds like her.

"I’d stopped at the little open-air market that morning and bought peaches," he says. "Too many peaches, because I didn’t know the French word for half kilo and accidentally asked for far more than one person should reasonably eat. I was trying to carry them back to the guesthouse I was staying in, and one rolled out of the bag and straight across the promenade."

I’m already grinning.

"It stopped right under your mother’s easel."

He pauses for effect, taking a bite of a cookie.

"She looked down at it, then up at me, and said, in French, ‘If this is your way of flirting, it needs work.’"

I laugh, because that part has always been my favorite.

"And because I was trying very hard to impress her," he says, "I answered in my terrible college French, ‘Then maybe you should teach me.’"

"Which you pronounced wrong," I remind him.

He squints at me. "I did not."

"You absolutely did."

He ignores that. "Your mother laughed anyway. Not a polite laugh. A real one. The kind that made her whole face change. She told me my accent was tragic, my peaches were bruising in the sun, and if I stood there staring at her another minute, I’d ruin her painting."

I can see it so clearly I almost forget I wasn’t there—the blue water, the tiled roofs, my mother with paint on her fingers and salt in her hair, my father young and hopelessly gone already.

"So naturally," he says, "I came back the next day."

"And the day after that," I say.

"And the day after that," he agrees. "At first I pretended I was there for the view."

"You were there for her."