“And you met him?” she asks, stepping deeper into my arms, raising her hands to my chest.
I clear my throat briskly. “Yeah, I met him. He’s a drunk in Chicago. He works maintenance for a hotel out there. Sits in a basement drinking Jack straight from a coffee mug and waits for shit to go wrong so he can swoop in and fix it, if he’s sober enough. When I found him he was drunk as hell. He didn’t understand who I was, so I got a room at the hotel and waited for the next day. In the morning when he came in to work he was coherent. He knew me right away.”
“Was he happy to see you?”
“Yeah,” I admit listlessly. “He was. He said he’d wanted to meet me for years but my mom made him swear to stay away until he sobered up. He never did so he never came back.”
“That’s really sad.”
“He’s a sad guy. He’s pathetic. He hates his job, hates his life. I felt bad for him. I told him we should keep in touch but he said we couldn’t. He told me meant that promise to my mom about getting sober before getting to know me and he said he was going to keep it. He said he was going to quit drinking that day.”
Lilly shakes her head. “He didn’t, did he?”
“No. I haven’t heard from him since I left Chicago that day. That was years ago.” I absently lean forward, pressing a slow kiss to her forehead. I breathe in the sweet scent of her hair, pushing out the memory of stale alcohol and sweat. “And that,” I whisper against her hair, “is a secret that nobody knows. One that no one else will ever know.”
Her arms go around my waist, hugging me tightly. It feels good. Solid. Comforting. It’s a scary thing, to tell her about my dad, but I think it’s a scary thing for her to trust me, and I want that more than anything. I know that to gain trust you have to give it, and I just gave her all of my aces. It’s a gamble I’m hoping will pay off.
She stands there with me for too long. Longer than her break. Longer than normal people should. She stays still in my arms like a statue on the street, a work of art, and I start to wonder if I’ve gambled and lost. I start to worry that I’ll never know what it takes to get closer to her.
That I lost her before I ever won her.
When Lilly finally speaks, her voice is smaller than a petal, “My dad has Alzheimer’s.”
But her words are larger than a mountain.
I open my mouth, struggling to find the right response.
Turns out there is none.
“How old is he?” I ask, completely thrown.
“Forty-seven,” she speaks quietly against my chest. “It started showing up a few years ago. It was little stuff at first. He’d forget where he put his keys. What he ate for breakfast. Then he couldn’t remember pictures we had around the house. There was one in the hall of us at Disneyland when I was in middle school. A couple years ago Mom found him standing in there staring at it and when she asked him what he was doing he started crying. He said he couldn’t remember the trip. He tried so hard but he couldn’t. After that it started happening faster. Bigger things, like how to get to work. Which car was his in the parking lot.” She pauses. I feel her take a bracing breath under my arms. “Last year he forgot my name. Two weeks later when I came into the house carrying groceries he started calling me by my mom’s name. Linda. He’s done it ever since.”
“Every time you see him?”
“No. Not every time. There are good days and bad days. The day you played the Panthers, that was a good day. We watched the game together as a family. I told him about you. That I’d met you and that you were funny. Sweet even. He was happy.” Her voice cracks. She sniffs roughly once. “He was my dad that day.”
I run my hand up and down her back slowly. “But there are bad days?”
“Yeah. Like last Sunday I couldn’t go over there. He had a bad week. He was freaked out because he knew he was forgetting things but he had no idea how much he’d forgotten. On days like those he doesn’t know me. He gets me confused with my mom. I look a lot like her when she was my age.” She shudders, her shoulders pitching forward like she’s going to be sick. “He came into the kitchen one day when I was in there. He thought I was Mom. He spun me around and he—he kissed me on the mouth. I was so freaked out I didn’t know what to do. I just stood there while he kissed me. While my dad licked my lips and groaned. When he let me go he told me I was as beautiful as the day he married me. He told me he loved me.”
“Shit, I—“ I don’t know how to finish that sentence. I’m stunned into silence, a rare state for me.