"Do I live here now?"
"Yeah, Dad. You live here now."
He nodded slowly. Then his face went blank, and he looked at me again, and whatever thread he'd been holding dissolved like sugar in water.
"Where are we?" he asked.
I told him again. I told him three more times over the next hour, and each time he nodded like it made sense, and each time the understanding dissolved before it could set.
The fourth time he asked, I was sitting on the edge of his new bed while he stood by the window looking at the courtyard. An old woman was down there in a wheelchair, a blanket over her knees, staring at nothing. She didn't move the whole time I watched her.
"This is Sunrise, Dad. It's a place where people can help take care of you."
"Oh." He turned to look at me. "And you'll visit?"
"Every chance I get."
He smiled at me, that same polite smile. "That's kind of you." He paused, his eyes searching my face like he was looking for something he'd misplaced. "Robert, was it?"
I nodded. My voice wouldn't come.
Derek found me in the hallway ten minutes later, leaning against the wall outside Dad's room with my eyes closed. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead.
"Hey." His hand landed on my shoulder. "You okay?"
"He asked me four times where he was. Four times in an hour. What happens when it's forty times? What happens when he forgets how to eat, how to walk?"
"Then he'll have people who know how to help him." Derek's grip tightened. "And he'll have us."
Through the door, the TV the nurse had turned on was playing some game show with applause and bells.
I hoped he was right.
The Ristras threw me a party at Boxcar that weekend.
The back room was packed and too warm, bodies pressed together and the smell of beer and hot wings filling the space. Lucero stood on a chair to give a toast, wobbled, grabbed Martinez's shoulder for balance, and his voice cracked on the word "brother."
"To Piper," someone shouted, and glasses went up, and the sound of them clinking together was like something breaking and coming together at the same time.
The TV above the bar was playing highlights from some game I didn't recognize. Nobody was watching it. They were watching me instead, waiting for me to be happy about the thing I was supposed to be happy about.
I smiled and raised my glass, and said the right words in the right order.
Martinez grabbed me in a headlock, his breath smelling like tequila, his grip too tight. I let him hold on anyway. The guys kept refilling my drink even though I wasn't drinking it, and the ice melted and the whiskey got watery, and I held the glass because it gave my hands something to do.
After an hour, the crowd thinned out. Some guys had early mornings, and others had wives who texted with increasing urgency. I nursed my warm beer and watched the room empty, and when Santos finally headed out with a hug and a promise to text, I slipped out the back door to the alley.
The cold hit like a wall. I leaned against the brick and closed my eyes, breathing in the smell of garbage and cigarette smoke, and winter. The bass from inside was muffled now, just a thump I could feel in my chest.
The door opened behind me.
"Thought I'd find you out here." Sarah stepped into the alley, pulling her coat tighter. "Derek said you do this. Disappear from your own parties."
"Not disappearing. Just taking a break."
"Sure." She didn't sound convinced, but she leaned against the wall beside me anyway, close enough that her shoulder almost touched mine. We stood there for a while, not talking, our breath making clouds in the cold air.
"I'm glad you're going," she said finally. "I know that sounds weird. But I am."
