Pop's not confused the way you'd think. He knows the difference between his dead wife and his living daughter. For the first month or so, he'd wince every time he said it, “Vera,” shake his head sadly, look down at his shoes—New Balance sneakers with therapeutic elastic laces, not the boots he wore his whole life. A baseball cap has replaced his Stetson. He's nearly unrecognizable. My friend Julie is his speech therapist, and she tells me that he still thinks Norah when he looks at me, it's just the signal gets lost in the aphasic fog that has settled somewhere between Pop's brain and his tongue. When he thinks-Norah-but-says-Vera, it sounds like “Vvvvveera.” He gets stuck on that first v sound, which, according to the manner of articulation chart Julie put on our fridge, is a labiodental fricative.

“Sounds dirty,” I said to Pop. “Labiodental.” I adjusted the magnets so I could see the whole consonant chart—the nasals and the alveolars, the voiced and the voiceless.

Pop laughed, and my heart fluttered a little, which I took as proof that it's not broken all the way. When Pop laughs, it feels like we're having a conversation instead of a series of Norah monologues, which are far less graceful than the stories Pop used to tell. There is no real prognosis for Pop, no clear number of months to live, no percentage of independence he'll regain. Pop appears at once fragile and strong, like an egg. Every morning when I tie his shoes I think, This might be the last time I tie his shoes, and also I wonder, How many more times will I have to tie his shoes?

I've seen Henson exactly five times since he bought Pop's ranch. I know because I started a page in my ledger just for him. I keep track of a lot of things in my ledger, how often I've turned the compost over, various downy woodpecker sightings, the fact that there were maybe five thousand Gunnison sage grouse left in the entire world last spring. It's a habit I picked up from Pop, the same way I got my head for numbers and my love of Oreo cookies. On October 30, Henson and I nodded hello to each other in the Safeway. He was pushing one of those double-decker small carts instead of a family-sized one, and he was buying cornflakes and vanilla ice cream and other plain, sensible foods. On Christmas Eve, he showed up to church for the first and only time. I swear I caught the candlelight reflect off tears on his cheeks when we all sang “Silent Night,” but I can't be sure. By the time the deacons turned the sanctuary lights back on, Henson was gone. He rode a horse in the New Year's Eve parade, his saddle strung with tiny white twinkling lights, and he tipped his hat and smiled at me when he passed by.