She turned back to the water. Neither of them said anything else about it for a while. It didn't need anything else. The decision had been made weeks ago in the space between what they said and what they did. The words were just catching up.
The woodsmoke from across the pond drifted over the water and reached the porch. Callie pulled her legs up onto the chair and wrapped her arms around her knees. She was wearing one of his flannel shirts over her T-shirt, which was another thing that had happened without discussion.
"I saw Hugh on Sunday," she said.
Noah's hand tightened slightly on the glass. "At Gretchen's?"
"Yeah. She invited me to the family dinner. He seemed good at first. Talked about the football season, told a story about the time he pulled over a state senator on Route 86. Classic Hugh." She paused. "But then he told the same story again twenty minutes later. Word for word. Same setup, same punchline. And when someone pointed it out, he got quiet and left the room."
"He does that."
"He repeated himself three times at dinner. Once more in the kitchen after."
Noah looked at the dark water. A fish broke the surface somewhere near the center of the lake, a small splash that rippled outward and then was gone.
"Early stages," he said. "He won't see a doctor. Says he's fine. Says his memory has always been like that."
"Has it?"
"No." He took a drink. "When I was growing up, Hugh could recite case numbers from twenty years ago. Badge numbers. License plates from traffic stops. The man had a memory like a filing cabinet. Everything in order, everything accessible." He set the glass on the arm of the chair. "Now he calls Ethan by Luke's name sometimes. He told Gretchen last week he needed to get to the office, and she had to remind him he retired six years ago."
Callie let the silence sit. She was good at silence. She understood that some things needed air around them before they could be discussed.
"It's getting worse," she said. It wasn't a question.
"It might be. Or it might be stress. The funeral. Luke. Everything that's happened since. Grief does things to memory."
"You don't believe that."
He didn't. Hugh's repetitions weren't grief. They were gaps. Small ones. Barely noticeable if you weren't paying attention. But Noah had been paying attention since the night he sat across from his father at the oak table and watched him ask about Mia's move twice in five minutes without realizing he'd already asked.
"Sometimes it feels like he's already saying goodbye to things," Noah said. "Not people. Just pieces of himself. Like rooms going dark in a house, one at a time. And he walks through the dark rooms and pretends they're still lit."
Callie looked at him. He hadn't meant to say that much.
"I don't know what I believe," he said. "I just know he's not the same."
"Are you going to talk to him about it?"
"I've tried."
"And?"
"He told me he was fine and asked me to leave."
Callie nodded slowly. She knew the Sutherland men well enough by now to understand that the conversation Noah had described was not a failed attempt. It was the conversation.That was how Hugh communicated when he was cornered. He denied and dismissed and closed the door, and the people who loved him stood on the other side and decided whether to keep knocking.
"Maddie could help," Callie said. "She's closer to him."
"Maybe. But Maddie has her own way of handling it. She smooths things over. Avoids the hard parts."
"Sound like anyone you know?"
He looked at her. She wasn't smiling but there was warmth in it. The kind of observation that came from someone who had earned the right to say it.
"Fair enough," he said.
His phone buzzed on the arm of the chair. A text from Mia: First exam next week. Criminal law. Wish me luck.He typed back:You won't need it. But good luck anyway.He showed Callie the screen.
