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“Our nurse, Denise, caught it this morning,” she continues. “He was running a fever, talking nonsense at breakfast, more confused than usual. She put it together right away. He’s already on antibiotics, the ship’s doctor was very good, but we want him seen properly when we dock in Mykonos the day after tomorrow.”

“I don’t understand. Is that a good thing or a bad thing, Mags?” I press.

“It’s the most boring infection on planet earth, but an infection is an infection, Grayson,” she says.

“Mags.”

She lets out a small sigh. “In men his age, with his condition, UTIs can make the dementia look about ten times worse than it is. Sometimes for a few days. Sometimes longer. So, the next little while may be hard, sweetheart, but it’s the infection, not him.”

Sure. The infection. Convenient little scapegoat, easy to blame the bacteria when the actual problem has been gnawing at his brain for two years and counting.

“Okay,” I say. It’s apparently the only word I can produce right now. A whole degree from Brown and this is what I’ve got. “Tell Denise I appreciate her.”

“I will,” she says.

A muffled noise on her end, and then my father’s voice rolls over the receiver. “Mags, who’re you talkin’ to?”

I close my eyes, tipping my head back against the cinderblock wall of the break room.

“It’s Grayson, honey,” Maggie says, away from the phone.

“Who?” he asks, and the familiar ache swells inside my chest.

I close my eyes. I tip my head back against the cinderblock wall of the break room.

“Grayson, sweetheart. Your son,” Maggie tells him.

“My son?” he repeats.

The question flies like a bullet between my ribs, and I want to crumble into myself. I want to scream but instead force myself to stay calm and say, “Hey, Dad.”

“Hello?” Dad says, his voice rising a pitch, and I know that if he were standing in front of me, his gray brows would furrow. He’d look at Maggie with wide eyes, waiting for her to say it’s a joke.

“Gray?” Maggie asks gently. “Don’t read too much into it. He just needs a minute. The fog rolls in and out, remember?”

“I know,” I murmur.

It’s a phrase I’ve heard her use a hundred times in the last year:the fog. A lyrical way of saying he will remember after a while, but in year two of this disease, I think the idea of fog sounds like horseshit. Fog implies the thing is still there underneath. Fog lifts. What is happening to my father is not the weather. It’s a long, slow demolition.

“Listen, honey. Could you email his medical records to Denise? The neuro report from Hirsh Cardiology from last year. The full medication list. They’re in the green folder, second drawer of his study.”

“Yeah. I’ll send it tonight,” I say.

“Tomorrow is fine.”

“I’ll send it tonight,” I repeat.

“Okay.” Her voice goes soft. “Talk to you later, Gray.”

The line dies in my hand.

The phone is hot against my ear. I forgot I was pressing it that hard, and there’s a little crescent of sweat on the screen when I pull it away, shaped like the corner of my jaw. I stare at it for a second before wiping it on my pant leg.

The TV across the room is on. Some afternoon news segment with the sound muted. There’s one of those scrolling tickers along the bottom, a red banner, white letters, the kind of thing reserved for breaking news and missing children. I focus on the TV because it’s better than listening to my father repeat the words ‘my son,’ as if they were a language he doesn’t speak.

The screen cuts to a photo and seeing her is worse than hearing my father not remember me.

I would recognize her blindfolded, drunk, dying, or all three. The girl who turned a stage name into a billion-dollar brand. The girl whose face has been smiling at me from every magazine rack in every gas station between here and Portland for the last two years, like the universe is fucking with me on purpose. Long, painted lashes. Eyes closed mid-belt. A microphone pressed against a mouth that used to bite mine. Stage lights are blowing out behind her in pink and white. The gold choker around her throat is the same one she stole from my sister’s jewelry box the summer she was seventeen and never gave back.