"I call every month, Red. I've been calling for a year." He held up a hand before I could argue. "Look. I'm not trying to win an argument here. I'm trying to get you to take this thing."
"And Dad?"
"Dad would kick your ass if he knew you were even hesitating." Derek picked up his beer again, turning it in his hands. "You remember what he used to say? When we were kids and you'd come home crying because some coach told you that you were too small?"
I remembered.
"He'd say, 'Junior, the only thing smaller than your body is the imagination of the people who can't see what you're gonna do with it.'" Derek's voice had gone rough around the edges. "He believed in you before anyone else did. And if he was sitting here right now, if he was having a good day, he'd tell you to stop being a stubborn little shit and go play hockey."
"That's not fair."
"None of this is fair." He wasn't angry, just tired in the same way I was tired. "But fair doesn't matter. What matters is that you've got a shot, and you're going to take it, and I'm going to handle things here. That's what's going to happen."
"Derek."
"Sarah and I already talked about it. Sunrise is fifteen minutes from our house. I'll be there every day. Every single day, Red. And when he has good days, I'll call you, and you can talk to him, and he'll tell you he's proud of you. And when he has bad days, I'll be there for those too."
Dad stirred in his chair. His eyes opened, and he looked around the room for a long moment before turning to Derek.
"Is it late?" he asked.
"Getting there, Dad."
"I must have dozed off." He rubbed his eyes, then looked at me. His face did that searching thing again, like he was trying to place me. "You're still here."
Derek and I looked at each other.
"Yeah," I said. "I'm still here."
Dad nodded slowly, then smiled that same polite smile he'd given me this morning.
"Well," he said. "That's nice. Having company."
I called Andy on Thursday and said yes.
The paperwork came by email, and I signed it at the kitchen table while Dad napped in the other room. I signed the Hive contract first, then the Sunrise Memory Care admission forms, then the Power of Attorney documents Derek had been asking me to sign for months.
My hand was steady because I made it steady. Hockey had taught me that much.
I sat at the table for a while after I finished, listening to Dad's breathing, to the tick of the kitchen clock, to the neighbor's dog barking at something that probably wasn't there. The stack of papers sat in front of me, neat and final.
Moving my father into Sunrise took three hours.
The facility smelled like floor cleaner and something floral underneath, air freshener trying to cover what it couldn't fix. Dad's new room was on the second floor, a single with a window overlooking a courtyard where residents could sit in good weather. The bed was narrow, and the closet was small.
Derek handled the paperwork at the front desk while I unpacked Dad's suitcase. His flannel shirts went in the top drawer. His slippers went by the bed. The photo of Mom from before she left, the one he'd kept on his nightstand for thirty years even though she'd been gone for twenty of them, went on the windowsill where he could see it.
I didn't know why he'd kept it. Some questions you don't ask your father.
"Where are we?"
I turned around. Dad was standing in the doorway with a nurse beside him, his hands clasped in front of him like a kid on his first day of school. He had that look on his face, the one that meant he was trying to hold on to something that kept slipping.
"This is your new room, Dad."
"My room." He looked around, taking it in. His eyes landed on the photo of Mom, and something moved across his face before it was gone again. "It's nice."
"Yeah. It's nice."
