On the plus side, Anne has served the steak presliced for all of us, so that Dad can easily handle it without using his left hand. I have to give her points for foresight.

And they both do talk to Joy, even my father, who asks surprisingly good questions. How long have you studied the piano? Where do you go to school? What’s your favorite subject? They’re sensible questions, the kind any grandparent might ask, to which Anne looks smug. Me? I’m relieved to hear him this way. I don’t want him to have Alzheimer’s disease. I don’t want him to have dementia, period.

Then, abruptly and wordlessly, he stands and leaves the table. We’ve barely finished our steak. Fresh-from-the-oven brownies are cooling on the stove for dessert.

Joy watches him go with a look of alarm, before glancing at me, then at Anne. “Was it something I said?”

“No, hon, he’s just tired,” Anne explains. “He gets like that sometimes.”

“The way he just picked up and left, that was weird,” Joy says.

My sister snickers. “Not with my father. He engages and disengages at will. He was always that way,” she says, shooting me a look that dares me to disagree.

I can’t. Yes, Dad always did what he wanted when he wanted, to hell with social norms. We assumed it was just an authoritative personality doing its own thing. In this instance, though, it could be that the effort to be “normal” has exhausted him, which happens to those with Alzheimer’s, I’ve read.

But right now, that’s neither here nor there. As I load the dishwasher, while beside me, not three feet away, a silent Anne cuts into the brownie pan, I’m thinking that this week could be tough. Between my father and her, I’m invisible.

Okay. So this week isn’t about me. It isn’t even about whether Dad shot Elizabeth. This week is about Joy.

Still, how not to take it personally, given my history here? I don’t need, don’t want to be the center of attention, but I can only ask so many questions about Anne, about Dad, about Bay Bluff, before silence sets in. Back in New York, Joy has plenty to say at my slightest suggestion, has plenty to initiate herself, and when silence settles there, it’s a comfortable one. This one is not. Aren’t they curious about my life? Do they care at all that I’m here?