I want to tell her to have fun, but I’d have to apologize if I say more, and I refuse to apologize. I’ve spent a lifetime apologizing. And I’m in the right here.

So I nod, which she can’t see, return the phone to my pocket, and try to put the discussion out of my head. It’s about compartmentalizing. I’m good at that in the city, where anonymity makes for easy diversion. Here, everywhere I look—now at the boulders off the road on the right, where my sisters and I used to sit finishing off our penny candy so that our parents didn’t know how much we’d bought—I see memories.

Dad stumbles. I reach out to steady him, but he catches himself. Has he actually pulled his arm away so that I don’t help?

“Your sister,” he growls.

I consider lying. He can’t have heard that clearly, and the truth will cause him distress. But a lie will cause me distress. “Yes. My sister.”

I prepare for him to attack her as he had so long ago. The words were angry and ugly in those awful days. I thought I’d buried them, but three break through. Traitor. Ingrate. Self-centered imbecile.

Words. Always words. Like knives coming from Jack and arrows from my dad.

But he doesn’t speak, just plods along, breathing heavily now. The road has started to climb, and he is leaning into it, shoulders rounded as they never used to do. The shape of him cries defeat. He seems very much alone.

Taking pity on him, I walk close enough so that he can’t miss me, far enough so that our arms don’t touch. He stops once, frowns at the path ahead, and, half to himself, says a breathy, “Is this right?”

It’s a minute before I realize that he is serious, several beats again before I accept that he is confused. More than anything else I’ve seen of him since we arrived, this is the most upsetting. Having lived on the bluff so long, he has taken this road thousands of times. It is the only way to the top of the bluff, hence the only one he could possibly take home. Confused is a serious problem.

Making light of it, I say, “The house is just ahead. Boy, is this road ever steep.”

He resumes his plodding, but I see that he is bracing the cast against his belt.

“Does your wrist hurt?”

He doesn’t respond. His mind is elsewhere. After several steps, he says under his breath, “Sometimes I think she sent her.”

My first thought is Margo, since my sister was our last touchpoint. But there is a gentleness to his voice that redirects me. “Elizabeth sent Lily?”