Page 80 of The Cost of Forgetting You

“Come on, Temptress.”

This time I don’t correct him.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Henry

August 30th, 2003

“It’s time, Henry.”

A glance in the rearview mirror tells me Delilah has tuned us out. She’s gazing out the window while swaying back and forth in her booster seat. Phil Collins’s croons fill the air. The girl’s got good taste. The smile that stretches my lips is lackluster, but it’s all I can manage. I’ve been spread so thin for so long I have nothing left to offer in the way of joy. It’s why I know Kimberly’s right, even if I don’t want her to be.

“You’ve done more for her than most kids would, but it’s time for us to live our own lives.” Kimberly doesn’t lower her voice, even with our daughter in the car. She never has. You coddle her too much, she says. It’s good for her to hear what real emotions sound like, what real problems are. She’ll be more prepared when she grows up.

Agree to disagree, I always retort. We’re a lot like a broken record these days.

Delilah hears that, too, and though she’s only five, she picks up on the tension between us. I see so much of myself in her, and so does Kimberly. Our daughter is sensitive, and she doesn’t like conflict. She makes herself smaller to leave room for everything—and everyone—who dares to be bigger than her. I worry one day this world will swallow her whole.

“What if I’m not ready?” My voice trembles. I don’t want it to, but it does. Even with the episodes getting more frequent, even with my mom’s care needs growing beyond what we can handle, the idea of leaving her in a facility somewhere feels impossibly cruel. After everything we’ve been through together, after she took Kimberly in and helped us care for Delilah while Kimberly finished her degree… These last two years of turmoil feel like a drop in the bucket of what I owe her.

The symptoms started off easy to ignore. She’d forget where she left something or how to properly load the laundry. No problem, I could put in a load after my shift at the factory. Kimberly could fold when she got home from class. Mom started to skip showering for days, then lie about it when we asked. She’d get angry. Belligerent. Still, we reasoned that she was just getting older. Quirky. A bit stubborn.

But then we got a call that Mom had shown up at the fire department with Delilah in tow, saying she’d found her in the woods and did they know this child? I drove straight over from work. Delilah was crying, begging for her nana, and my mother didn’t know who she was. Didn’t remember that I’d even had a child.

Delilah went to daycare. Kimberly started work. But every night when we came home, it became more and more clear that Mom needed round-the-clock care. After a year, I switched to nights to be home with her during the day, and Kimberly cut her hours to be there when I couldn’t be. Now even that doesn’t seem to be enough.

“What if I’m ready?” Kimberly bites out. Delilah notices, because she always does. I watch her gaze flit to her mother and widen. Kimberly continues, unaware or uncaring or both. “I know you love your mom; I do. But I can’t do this anymore. I can’t worry which version I’m going to get of her each day, or that she’s going to run off the moment I turn my back. I deserve more than that. Your daughter deserves more than that.”

“I love Nana,” Delilah whimpers. She brushes her hair—the same muted brown tone as mine—back from her face with a flat palm. “She’s gonna be okay, right?”

I stop at a red light and turn to glance over my shoulder at her, offering my most reassuring smile. “Nana’s gonna be fine, sweet pea. She just hurt her ankle on her walk today, so they’re keeping her at the hospital till she’s all better.”

Delilah’s expression tells me she doesn’t believe me, but she keeps her lips pressed tight.

“She has to have surgery because she walked off into the woods in the middle of the night and broke her ankle. She’s not gonna be fine, Henry. A facility is what she needs, with a whole team of people. I’m one person. I can’t do it all.” Kimberly’s lips are pursed, just like her mother’s were the day we sat across that table. I want to reach for her, to smooth them out, but the light turns green and she jerks her chin forward. “Go.”

“I’m with you, you know.”

“What do you mean?”

I capture the hand on her lap and squeeze. “You’re not just one person. We’re in it together.”

“I wish that were enough for me, Henry, but it’s not.” She sighs, her shoulders sagging. Not with relief. With finality. “It’s not up for debate anymore. She goes, or I do.”

My spine stiffens and my throat dries. I glance in the rearview mirror. Delilah’s already looking at me, lashes damp with quiet tears. She hates when we argue, and we do it too much.

“Okay,” I whisper. “I’ll start looking on Monday.”

“Today.” Kimberly slips her hand from beneath mine and crosses her arms over her chest. She stares straight ahead and doesn’t say another word for the rest of the drive home.

Before I’ve even placed the car in park, she’s unbuckling and opening the door. She rounds the hood and heads for the front steps without sparing a glance in mine or Delilah’s direction.

I watch her go, wishing I felt more than abject terror at the idea of her leaving me. Not heartbreak. Not sadness. Just fear—that she’d take Delilah with her to spite me. That I’d never see my daughter again.

Delilah is staring out the window again, this time in the direction of Abel Johnson’s farm. He passed last year, leaving the grass overgrown and the house abandoned. Delilah likes to watch it the way I always have. It’s a beautiful, peaceful place. Something we sorely lack in this house at the moment.

As much as I’ll feel like a failure of a son, if we keep going like this, I’ll be a failure as a dad. And I can’t fail my little girl.

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