“Yes, I am. I’ll be right there,” I say, wheeling the car around.

—

My father has calmed down by the time I get there and doesn’t seem to understand why he’s sitting in the sheriff’s office at all.

“Shame on you,” he says to Sheriff Kahn, even as I’m trying to wrangle him into the passenger seat. Somehow, he’s lost his cane. “Shame on you, roughing up an old man like that. I wasn’t doing anything but minding my own business, and you come around and talk nonsense about the dancing hall—”

“That place closed, Dad,” I say, shooting Sheriff Kahn an apologetic look.

“I know that, Abigail,” he snaps, sounding, for a second, more like the dad I remember. Don’t talk back to your elders. Watch that filthy mouth of yours. I’m your father and you’ll do what I say. “Closed right after your mother died.”

Back home, I find his cane propped near the door. Who knows how he made it anywhere without it. I suspect one of his neighbors gave him a lift, not realizing how bad my dad has gotten. He slaps my hands away when I try to make him take his medicine, but finally he calms down and lets me put the pills on his tongue myself, sitting there meekly, watery-eyed, as if trapped beneath the thin liver-spotted skin and the stale breath is a child in need of attention. I leave him sleeping and promise to call in the morning.

I am gutted by his need, and by my desire to fix him. I should be relieved. He’s too pathetic now to hate. I never truly planned to confront him. I never really expected to reconcile any of it. Seeing this version of him, I know in my whole body that none of those things will ever even become an option. It is too much.

In the bathroom I wash my hands, splash water on my face, and wash my hands again. I yank open the cabinet, palming a few Valium from a bottle made out to his name. But I’m still too shaky to drive, and when I step outside, the smell of fire reaches me across the distance and touches old memories: lake parties that never included me. Kids dragging coolers and beach towels into the woods. My father hitting me hard and open-palmed across the face the one time I tried to sneak out.

Distantly, I hear the shrieks of laughter and the thud of music. I know that sound. Someone is having a bonfire.

Memories are like fire, and need only a little oxygen to grow. I remember now how I used to see the far-off light of bonfires from just a little farther than my back porch. I remember that sometimes my father would find crumpled beer cans in the woods near the toolshed, how the braver kids would get close enough to pelt the house with empties—just because they could, because it was there—until my father took his rifle and fired blind into the dark.