Say You'll Remember Me(85)

He put a hand on his whiskey. “You three talk about it. Give me your answer tomorrow. I’ll do whatever you decide.”

He threw back the rest of his drink and left.

Tristan glared after him. Then he turned on us. “You guys are seriously fucking okay with this?”

“Tristan, stop,” I said wearily.

“No. He’s not even trying to hide it now!”

“And why should he?” My sister’s tone caught me by surprise. “Dad has a right to happiness, Tristan.”

“Not if it means he’s fucking cheating!”

She set her wineglass on the counter with a clink. “So Dad goes on dates. Who gives a shit? Not Mom. All Mom knows is that he’s here. In the grand scheme of everything that’s going on is this really the hill you want to die on?”

“He’s trying to put her in a home!”

“Dad’s being forced to make decisions that none of us could ever comprehend,” she said. “He has to think about what’s right for her, what’s right for us, what’s right for his grandkids. And everything he said was true. Her care is complicated. We’re all making sacrifices and nobody’s making more than him. If you want to be pissed about something, be pissed that our grandmother had a terminal illness and we didn’t get to know about it until two weeks after she’s dead.”

“Stop,” I said.

My brother’s chin quivered. He looked like he was about to burst into tears or storm out or both.

He chose both.

He swiped the Merlot from the counter, flipped Jeneva off, and left.





39





XAVIER


IT WAS 11:00 a.m. the day after the funeral. I was on the phone with Samantha in the clinic helping Maggie with a blood draw on a very lethargic senior dog, back in Minnesota where it was minus eighteen outside.

Samantha had just gotten me caught up.

“I’m too exhausted to even know how I feel about it,” she said. “I think my brain needs to pick and choose its battles right now.”

“Let’s start with the nursing home,” I said. “What did everyone decide?”

“We’re going to try the part-time home care and sleeping pill thing we talked about. I’m gonna make calls today to the doctor and an agency to see what’s available.”

“I think that’s a good start,” I said.

“Yeah.” She went quiet. “I hate it when Tristan is right. It’s like he’s some deranged Gen Z prophet.”

“What else has he been right about?”

“That you’re totally obsessed with me and faked a veterinary conference to take me on a date.”

I paused. “Maybe he is a prophet.”

She laughed tiredly.

We finished the blood draw and I gave the dog a pat.

“I’m kind of nervous about today,” she said. “This is the first time I’ve ever been home alone with Mom. I mean, I’ve been alone with her while Grandma took a nap or something, but it’s just me.”

“When in doubt, put food out,” I said, lifting the dog into the kennel.

“I can’t believe how much that actually works,” she said.

I latched the cage. “Everyone and everything is better fed.” I leaned on the counter. “How do you feel about your dad dating?” I asked.

“I don’t know. If you would have asked me six months ago, I would have told you he should burn in hell. But now? I’m beyond judging how anyone deals with any of this.”

She sighed. “I have to go. I have a conference call with Murkle’s at nine to discuss second quarter plans—I’m doing a new campaign with twenty-five mustard recipes. The slogan is ‘use Murkle’s unless you want it to suck.’”

I chuckled at it and looked at my watch. “Call me when you get your lunch break,” I said.

“I will. I miss you.”

I smiled. “I miss you too.”

“It’s seventy-one here today,” she said.

“Now you’re just rubbing it in.”

She laughed and hung up.

I took out my earbud and looked around the back room, already feeling the dip in mood I got when I hang up with her.

I usually didn’t mind being alone, but after almost two weeks with Samantha and her family, my threshold for companionship had changed.

I hated that I would go home to an empty apartment tonight. That I would eat dinner alone, make food for no one. Sleep in an empty bed. Not being with her and her family was wrong and distressing.

I felt a homing response in her direction. A constant pull to the west. It got stronger every time I went there.

I wondered what would come of that. How much I would suffer six months from now, a year from now, two, not being there.

I tried not to think about it. There was nothing I could do to change it. But the dread of it existed in my peripherals every minute of every day. It was coming, and I knew it.

The old dog whimpered in his kennel.

I crouched to scratch his ears through the bars.

He had people who loved him. He didn’t want to be here any more than I did. He wanted to be home with his family. I felt the same way.

We were both in cages. Only I’d made mine.