Robert never let on to Joanna about his dire straits and continued to give her all he could. If she needed clothes or books, he would shuffle through his stack of credit cards and use the one with the lowest balance, and when they discussed universities over coffee one morning, he never once looked at the price. She was his life, and he was prepared to work until his dying day if need be, but the very next day, blinded by a headache, he fell to the floor. Robert Sheppard would never work again.

***

Buttering some toast, Joanna swore under her breath as she dropped the knife again. Flexing her right hand, she winced at the ache put there the day before by a handshake with a very perturbed woman. Chuckling as she remembered the infantile show of power, Joanna wiggled her fingers, picked up the tray, and went upstairs to deliver breakfast to her father.

“There’s my girl,” Robert said with a twinkle in his eyes. “Eggs Benedict, I presume.”

Joanna smiled as she placed the tray on his lap. “Sorry, Dad, we were all out of hollandaise. I hope you don’t mind scrambled with toast.”

“Of course I don’t,” he said, scanning the tray. “No jam?”

“Sorry, all out,” Joanna said as she pulled over a chair and sat down.

“What are you doing?” Robert asked.

“What? Can’t I spend some time with my dad?”

“You usually bounce around in here doing everything you can possibly do in five minutes, and then you’re off.” Noticing his daughter’s stunned look, Robert said, “While I can’t always remember what happened yesterday, your morning routine hasn’t changed in years. Repetition, it seems, is my friend.”

“I’ll have to remember that,” Joanna said with a nod.

“You’d best because you sure as hell know I won’t,” Robert said, laughing as he struggled to keep the eggs on his fork.

“You want me to do that?”

Frowning, he managed to gobble up a bit of egg before it fell from his fork. Sighing at the mess he had just created, Robert said, “You would think that after not having the use of my right hand for so long, my left would eventually step forward and make me proud, but the blasted thing has a mind of its own. I tell it to do one thing, and it does another. It’s tremendously annoying, not to mention messy.”

Joanna gazed at her father. He was still handsome in her eyes, and although the strokes had done their damage to his memory and mobility, they had not yet touched his sense of humor.

“You’re staring.”

Broken from her thoughts, Joanna said, “We need to talk.”

“I thought that’s what we were doing, but aren’t you going to be late for work?”

“No, I’m…I’m not going to work. That’s what we need to talk about.”