There were nights when I was alone in my little house, wishing someone would text me or drop by, feeling a little afraid to reach out in case I’d be rejected. (You’d think a woman in her thirties wouldn’t have those feelings. You’d be wrong.) I worked on the house every morning, learning what wood rot was, finding mouse droppings in my insulation, realizing that one outlet downstairs was probably not enough. In the evenings, I painted for my interior decorators—they’d send me a swatch of fabric or take pictures of a throw pillow and instruct me on what the homeowner wanted—those “little dot paintings” (Seurat, I assumed) or “swirly” (Van Gogh) or “messy” (Pollock) or “those weird stick figures where the person only has one eye” (Picasso). My favorite was “little bitty brushstrokes so up close you can’t tell what it is but from far away, you can, like those Magic Eye puzzles” (Monet. So sorry, Claude).

The only time I felt like my old self was when I was with my dad. He’d made some real progress from those terrifying first days in January. He wasn’t talking or otherwise communicating yet . . . I’d been trying some sign language with him, since I knew a little from St. Catherine’s, where it was taught one day a week. LeVon was trying that, too, but we’d yet to have an Anne Sullivan/Helen Keller breakthrough. Not yet. He was right on the cusp, it seemed. I could sense it.

He smelled different, my father. It was one of those things you didn’t know would affect you until you were crying in the bathroom.

Mom and Juliet were there, and I was sure they missed him, too, but they hid it well. I had the feeling Mom wished he had just died.

But he was getting better. “It’s tempting to read into every little thing,” LeVon had warned me. “If he’s having a breakthrough, we’ll know, but it’ll be harder if you attribute every reflex to meaningful interaction.” He put a big hand on my shoulder. “But I agree with you. He’s making progress.”

We all fricking loved LeVon.

Meanwhile, something was happening to me.