“Oh, well, your father will be along soon, then. Come in and get washed up for dinner. You know how hungry Daddy is after working all day. He’ll want to eat as soon as he gets home.”

Paul took the stairs slowly, each step a reminder of the realities of his life.

“George? Is that you?” Marion came back to the door. “Oh, there you are! Dinner is ready! Come in and have a cold beer.”

It took everything Paul had to cross the porch to the front door, to tell his mother once again that he was Paul, not George. They’d stopped telling her that George was dead, because neither he nor Alex could bear to see her relive her painful loss with every new reminder. They’d decided to let her have her illusions if they brought her comfort.

But being constantly mistaken for his late father was taking a toll on Paul—and on his brother, too.

Wearing a towel around his waist and dripping from the shower, Alex materialized out of the hallway where the bedrooms were located. “Hey, Mom,” Alex said. “Come have a seat. Dinner is almost ready.”

“Your dad just got home. Give him a minute to wash up.”

Alex glanced at Paul. “You okay?”

“Sure,” Paul said with a grim smile, “never better.”

Hope followed him inside and went through the motions of getting Marion to the table and cutting her chicken into tiny bites.

Different day, same routine. Sometimes Paul wondered how much more he could take before he’d lose his own mind. But he and his brother had promised their father on his deathbed that they would take care of their mother. And that was exactly what he would do, even if their situation was slowly killing him one painful day at a time.

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

After a delicious dinner of roasted chicken, potatoes and stuffing that Hope had made for them, Paul took a cold beer to the back steps that overlooked the cabin where Hope and Ethan lived. With Ethan’s pumpkin successfully carved, Paul’s mother in bed, Alex and Jenny gone to move a few more things into the new house, and with no meetings in town tonight, Paul found himself with a rare moment of idle time.

He liked the stargazing back here. Out front, the security lights from the store and gardens made it tough to see much of anything. But the view from the back of the house was spectacular, especially in the clear September sky.

Hope and Ethan had fallen into the habit of joining them for dinner, which made for a fun gathering at the end of every day. It was so much better to have Alex, Jenny, Hope and Ethan around to help with Marion than it had been at first, when he’d been alone with their mother’s deteriorating condition.