For a moment, I’m terrified: he doesn’t recognize me, either.

Then he begins to hoist himself up, gripping the arms of his easy chair.

“It’s okay, Dad. Sit.” I lean down and let him hug me. I can’t remember the last time we hugged.

“Sweetheart.” He pats my shoulder and brushes his dry lips against my cheek. His voice is faint, and his greeting—sweetheart—is one he hasn’t used since I was a small child. “I hoped you were still coming.”

“Of course, Dad. I told you I was,” I say.

“It’s been so long…” He closes his eyes, leaning back in his chair, as if even the small physical effort has exhausted him.

I resist the urge to apologize. He knows why I haven’t come sooner. Everyone knows—about his temper, about his fits, about his dark moods. For weeks after my mother died, everything I did made him erupt in a fury. And then, just as quickly, he would withdraw into silence, would pretend I didn’t exist at all. But everything he did was okay, because he’d “found the Lord.” In town, he wore his religion like armor, and somehow that kept him untouchable. At home, he wielded it like a weapon.

Everyone knew, and at the same time, no one saw; no one said a thing. In the city, everyone is anonymous; but in a small town where everyone knows everyone, it takes real skill to look the other way when you’re looking at a face you recognize.

Nothing has changed in here, aside from the addition of a single photo—one I sent from college graduation—tacked above the mantel. My mother’s china on display in the hutch. The painting of Jesus on the cross in the corner of the dining room. An old box TV with a VCR—God, a VCR—just opposite my dad’s easy chair. A fine layer of dust on everything. And my dad’s slippers—the same slippers he had ten years ago—nearly worn through. It’s as if time stopped when I left.

I didn’t know what to expect coming here. My aunt Jen—Dad’s sister, older by four years—sent me a note last Christmas after she’d passed through. She was the one who told me about Dad’s decline. Alzheimer’s, she thought, though of course my dad refused to go to the doctor.

It’s just little things, she’d said. Where his keys are. Mood swings. He falls down a lot. He still knows who we are, though.

“How was the drive?” His voice sounds old, worn to thinness, and makes an unexpected swell of pity rise inside of me.

“Fine. Traffic stopped up on 83, but only for a half hour or so.” Ten years and we’re talking about traffic. There’s a long, awkward silence and I fumble for something to say. What did we ever talk about? Did we talk?

Instinctually, I count the steps to the front door in my head: twenty-three. Thirteen to the door that leads through the kitchen to the backyard. Seventeen to the stairs, in case I need to flee to my room.