“For what I’d find.” Ryan looked over at her, his expression grim. “I hardly recognized him at first—there were tubes coming out of his head, wires all over his chest. But the worst part was the damage the stroke had inflicted on his brain. His speech was slurred, a problem the doctor called ‘aphasia.’ Communicating with him was very difficult. He was disorientated, confused—just bringing a single word to his lips seemed to take a herculean effort. And then there was a raft of physical issues, problems with his mobility, coordination, balance, muscle movement—all brought about by severe hemiparesis.”

“Hemi-what?”

“Partial paralysis down one side of the body,” Ryan clarified, giving her an apologetic smile. “Sorry, I don’t mean to rehash all the medical terms, but it’s like being dropped into another world when something like that happens—you suddenly learn a whole bunch of words you never even knew existed.”

“I can imagine.” Amy fell silent as she watched a big rig trundle down the main road, roaring past like a freight train, four bright headlights cutting through the darkening air.

“After that came rehabilitation, and lots of it.” Ryan’s head sank a little lower, dragged down by the memories. “It wasn’t an easy time,” he said, his voice nearly breaking. “He really struggled.”

“Must have been hard for you too, watching him go through all that.”

Ryan shrugged his shoulders. Through a tightened throat he told her it was mostly just a blur, but that was a lie. The truth was that he remembered nearly everything from inside that hospital, some of it in granular detail—from the shade of beige on the corridor walls, to the stench of disinfectant, right down to the taste of the stale crackers from the vending machine and the bitterness of the burnt coffee. He remembered the view out the window of the small, pebbled, ­walled-in courtyard. He remembered the army of therapists. He remembered wheeling his father back and forth between them all, from one long, draining session to the next, the exercises, the repetition, the feeling that they weren’t getting anywhere. He remembered the despondency in his father’s eyes, the look of a man broken, defeated. But most of all, Ryan remembered what happened six weeks into rehabilitation when he received a visit from a man in a suit, a man who delivered news that no son would ever want to hear.

“Anyway.” Ryan snapped himself out of it and tried to force the memories from his head, even though the expression on his face telegraphed the fact that there was a great deal more being left unsaid. “He pulled through, and that’s all that matters.”

Amy let a moment of silence pass. “So, you’ve had help through all of this? I mean, it’s not just you and your dad, is it?”

“No, it’s only us.”

“No other family nearby?”