“I tried to tell them once, but they didn’t want to understand it.” My stomach twisted, remembering. “They wanted to think I was lying, making it up. My mom got on the internet and tried to look up proof that no one in their mid-twenties could get early-onset dementia, especially not something that progressed the way his did. So I stopped trying. It was too much work to try to convince them.”

“That’s shit.”

Yeah. It was. “I think it’s easier for people to deny something than learn and change.”

“Still shit. Your family was shit for doing that to you.” There was an extra edge in his tone. “And his family? Did they step up?”

Tears fell down my face.

He didn’t know. He didn’t see. I wasn’t making a sound.

My voice was normal. “At the end. They took over conservatorship of him. He’s completely reliant on them for everything now.”

“Did they know before the end, though?”

My throat spasmed. My hands trembled. My knees almost buckled. But my voice—it was normal. Maybe I couldn’t lie about some stuff, but other things, I didn’t give a damn thing away. And for the moment, walking that dark path, I let myself fall apart, except the part he could hear.

“His dad had passed from dementia, and there was some violence that came with it before he went into a facility. Damian blamed his mom for letting it occur as long as it did, so there were problems between them. They didn’t talk.”

“Did you reach out to her?”

My voice dipped, a small chink in my armor. “Yes.”

He paused. I knew he heard the small crack in my voice.

He asked, his voice low, “And he didn’t want you to?”

The chink grew. “No.”

“I will never forgive you if you go to her about this. I’ll never forget, even with my brain. I won’t forget. It’ll be the one thing I remember about you: that you betrayed me.”

“She’s your mom, Damian. She can help.”

“No, she can’t! I don’t want her to know.”

Reese was quiet again. We walked a few more yards. My heart felt like it was down there with my feet, like I was walking on top of it.

I was whispering now, and Reese had to know I was faltering. “Sometimes the hardest part of having a disease, or having something happen to you, is acknowledging that it’s happening. Once you do, your life is never the same. You’re never normal again. Once you acknowledge it and ask for help, you’re never the same person again. You cease to be you, and you become the you with the problem. He’s no longer Damian. He’s Damian who has dementia. Pride can sustain a person for a long time before they have to break.”

I sank to the ground.