“I’ve been gray since my twenties,” my dad says, his smile widening. “I’m used to it.”

The aide laughs and pushes him forward. “You’ve been a little over twenty for thirty years, Scott.”

Dad chuckles at that, and the laughter breaks the tension. It’s the happiest I’ve seen him since the hospital. He pats his hair down in the mirror by the door, his hand jerking in the new way that’s replaced the near-constant trembling.

“Well, I’m going to walk my friend out,” I say, heading for the door and hoping Abigail follows. “Be right back.”

I lean down and kiss my dad on the cheek. The aide missed a spot while shaving him, and the overlooked bit of stubble scrapes me, like it used to when I was a kid and I jumped into my parents’ bed in the morning.

“Nice to meet you,” my dad says to Abigail as I open the door.

“You too!” she says, then follows me onto the porch. The door closes behind us and we’re silent as we look out at the yard.

The sunlight isn’t strong enough to be classified as warm, but green things are coming up in my mom’s garden. I picture them under the soil just struggling to break through the newly-thawed surface, and what it must feel like to be in so much darkness, then suddenly light.

“What does he have?” Abigail asks, quietly breaking the silence as we head for her car. I shake my head and stuff my hands into the pockets of my jeans.

“What is it, Cham?” Abigail puts her arms around me. I like her hugs more than anyone else’s. She always smells like baby powder, and it’s not creepy because I know she wasn’t rubbing up on any babies.

“It wasn’t a heart attack or heart stuff,” I say into her soft hair. “He has Parkinson’s.” The word bounces off the car and then the nearest tree and punctures my eardrum as slowly as the disease ruins a body. “He has Parkinson’s,” I repeat, and look up at the sky only to discover that the world has not ended. “He’s had it for a few years.”

Abigail takes a deep breath, her green eyes so green they need a new word for green. “I’m sorry, Cham. I’m so sorry.”

“We thought something was wrong for a while, but then when I was in eighth grade, he was chaperoning our field trip to the aquarium, and this little smarty-pants bitch was like, My nana had Parkinson’s, blah blah blah, I think he has that.”

Abigail’s face crumples into a weird smile. “Oof, and then you punched the bus window at her?”

I grimace. “Yeah.”

She laughs. “You’re a badass.”

“Something like that.”

I pick up a fat green caterpillar on some soul-searching journey from one end of the driveway to the other. Now that I’ve started talking, it’s easier to keep going. And you know what? It feels better. “We obviously would’ve had to face things eventually, but she said it in front of the whole class and… yeah.” Abigail hugs me again, then bends down to tie my combat boot. I guess it came undone with all this fighting my heart’s been doing. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. It’s just not something my family talks about.” I place the caterpillar down, feeling I’ve imposed on its destiny long enough. “You know when someone is embarrassed about something and you feel embarrassed for them because they’re embarrassed? Not because the thing is actually embarrassing, but because it’s so goddamn hard to watch someone try to hide something they can’t hide.…”