"I'm asking you." She leaned forward slightly. "Your turn. What's really going on, Miles? And don't give me the estate-settling line. I know when you're hiding something."
"You always did."
"Then stop hiding."
I opened my mouth to deflect again, another joke, another redirect, another layer of armor between us. But something inher expression stopped me. The openness. The patience. The way she was looking at me.
"I'm scared," I admitted, the words escaping before I could stop them. "Of being back here. Of facing everything I left behind. Of?—"
My hand was resting on the table. It chose that moment to betray me.
The tremor started small, a fine vibration in my fingers that rattled my coffee cup against the saucer. Not violent, but unmistakable. I pulled my hand back instinctively, shame heating my face.
But Charlotte was faster.
She reached across the table and covered my hand with hers. Her touch was warm, firm, but gentle. It was not restraining, just present. Grounding.
The tremor stopped.
Not gradually. All at once. As if her touch had completed a circuit, grounding the faulty electricity in my nervous system.
I stared at our joined hands, her slim fingers over my knuckles, and for one suspended moment, I felt whole. Calm. Tethered to something good and real.
She didn't gasp. Didn't ask questions. Didn't offer pity. She just held my hand, her thumb tracing a single soothing stroke across my skin, her eyes meeting mine with quiet, knowing compassion.
She'd seen. Of course, she'd seen. She was probably cataloguing my symptoms, running differentials, and landing on conclusions I wasn't ready to confirm.
"Charlotte—"
My phone buzzed against the table, shattering the moment. The screen lit up with a name that turned my blood cold.
DR. PATEL
"I'm sorry," I said, pulling my hand from beneath hers. The loss of contact felt physical, like stepping from warmth into winter. "I have to take this."
"Of course." Her eyes were heavy with concern, but she nodded. "Go."
I grabbed the phone and walked toward the door, answering just as I stepped outside. The afternoon cold bit through my shirt immediately.
"Miles." Dr. Patel's voice was calm, professional, the voice of a man trained to deliver devastating news gently. "Do you have a moment?"
"I do."
"I've reviewed your latest cognitive assessments and the logs you've been keeping. I wanted to discuss the results."
My chest tightened. "And?"
"There's progression. More than we'd hoped to see at this stage." A pause. "The memory lapses you've reported, forgetting medication, appointments, losing track of days, they're increasing in frequency. The pattern is consistent with what we discussed. The early-onset dementia is manifesting and progressing faster than predicted."
My world had narrowed to a pinpoint. His voice, clinical and careful. The cold air that burned my lungs. The distant sound of traffic that seemed to come from very far away.
"How fast?" My voice came out hollow, defeated.
"Impossible to predict precisely. It could be slow. It could be... less slow. What matters now is adjusting your treatment plan and scheduling more frequent monitoring. I want to refer you to a cognitive specialist?—"
He kept talking. Treatment options. Therapy strategies. Medication adjustments. The words washed over me like waves, and I couldn't hold onto any of them.
All I could see was my father in his final year. Sitting in his chair, looking at me with eyes that couldn’t recognize his son. Asking who I was. Asking where his wife had gone, forgetting she'd died six months before.
