“It's okay, Mr. Perkins,” the nurse said gently. “There are no wrong answers here.”
When it was time to leave, Kate couldn't move. How did you walk away from your father, knowing he might not remember you tomorrow?
“We should go,” Tom said quietly. “The staff said it's easier if we don't linger.”
“Easier for who?” Kate snapped.
But Pop had already dozed off in his chair, the confusion and stress exhausting him. They slipped out while he slept, and Kate felt like the worst kind of betrayer, abandoning him while he was unconscious.
In the parking lot, she stood frozen by the car. Her siblings were in their own vehicles, waiting for her to move so they could leave. Lillian left in her Mercedes, and Ben stood by his truck, patient, watching Kate.
“I can't,” Kate said to no one in particular.
Ben walked over, didn't touch her, just stood close. “You can. You did.”
“What if he wakes up and doesn't know where he is?”
“Then the staff will help him. That's what they do.”
“What if he thinks we abandoned him?”
“Then tomorrow he'll forget he thought that.”
“That doesn't make it better.”
“No,” Ben agreed. “It doesn't.”
Kate drove back to the inn on autopilot. The building felt wrong without Pop in it, too quiet, too empty. His chair in the sunroom looked accusatory. His coffee mug sat in the dish drainer. His slippers were by his bed, forgotten in the packing.
“I'll take them tomorrow,” Dani said, seeing Kate hold them.
“He has other slippers.”
“But these are his favorites.”
“Katie...” Dani's voice was gentle. “He won't know the difference.”
That was the worst part, Kate thought. Pop wouldn't know the difference. Wouldn't know his room from any other, his children from the staff, his life from whatever dream he was living in his broken mind.
She went to his room, stood in the doorway. The bed was stripped, boxes of his remaining things stacked by the dresser. Twenty years of living reduced to what would fit in a single room at a facility.
“We kept too much,” Tom said from behind her. “He can't have all this there.”
“I know.”
“We'll need to sort through it. Decide what to store, what to donate.”
“Not today.”
“No, not today.”
But Kate started anyway, opening boxes, finding treasures and trash mixed together. Pop's fishing licenses from forty years ago. Love letters to Elizabeth. Tax returns from the eighties. Photos of people she didn't recognize. A lifetime of accumulation that meant everything and nothing.
In his nightstand, she found a notebook. Pop's handwriting, but recent, shaky. Daily entries, most just a few words:
Katie made eggs.Sunny day.Elizabeth is gone.Man fixing roof seems nice.Can't remember Tom's wife's name.Katie looks tired.Forgot where bathroom is.Katie still tired.Want to go home.Am home?Katie needs to smile more.
The entries stopped several days earlier. Kate sat on the floor, holding the notebook, crying for the father who'd been documenting his own disappearance, who'd noticed her exhaustion even as his mind failed.
