“It’s just comedy-Dad—he’s like that. He’s always been like that: absentminded, stumbling along. Why is this time different?”

“I’ve tried to keep the worst of it from you, but I took him to the doctor last week. He believes it’s Alzheimer’s.” He paused in the time it took Colleen’s breath to gather in fear. “I need you to come home.”

Dizziness enveloped Colleen and she sat on a stool as coffee sloshed from the mug onto the black marble counter. “You better not be mucking with me,” she said, using her dad’s only curse word, if it could be called a curse word at all.

“I’m not mucking with you.”

Between brother and sister, this line was a solemn vow that they were telling the truth.

“It can’t be,” Colleen said, brightening for only a breath. “His sixtieth birthday is in two weeks, and that’s too early. I know that—”

“Yes, it’s called early onset.”

“Why am I only hearing this now? I talked to him just a few days ago. He was fine.”

“That’s the thing, Lena. He’s fine until he isn’t. You only talk to him when he is. But when I received a late mortgage notice . . . It’s a long story. Come home and I’ll tell you everything.” Shane had never been so direct. Maybe he was thinking that her arguments often won, that she always had excuses. Maybe this time her baby brother didn’t want to hear them.

“Okay,” she said softly. “I hear you. So what are we going to do?”

“I have an idea.” His voice was resolute; she’d heard it before. “I have a really good idea.”

Chapter Two

The past is never just the past.

David Whyte, Consolations

Colleen stood at the window with the disconnected phone still in her hand.

No.

Not Dad.

Her brother had hung up on her, but not before telling her to text her flight info a.s.a.p. For tomorrow, he’d said.

Tomorrow.

“Oh, Dad.” Her voice broke as she spoke into the silent apartment.

Gavin Donohue was the kindest man Colleen had ever known. He was the barometer of all things good and true; he was the most stable and loving presence in her life, and she missed him every day. If her brother was right—and he’d used the solemn phrase and incantation, so he must believe he was—then of course she must go home tomorrow. If what he’d said was true, she didn’t have the luxury of time, to amble home whenever she felt strong enough to face Hallie and the memories.

Memories. They were being destroyed in her dad’s brain. Yet memories were why Colleen was in New York, the reason she’d left her family and the life she once thought she’d never abandon.