“It was, and there wasn’t much I could do to help. I did what I could. I got him out of the hospital as often as possible, wheeled him around the park, fed him his lunch, read him the news. Sometimes we’d just listen to the birds and watch clouds roll across the sky. I talked about the ranch, about Seabrook, filled him in on how the horses were doing, and talking about home never failed to lift my father’s mood. It was the only time I ever saw him relax. His eyes would brighten, and for a few minutes he seemed to forget about everything that was going on. For a fleeting moment, I caught a glimpse of the man I knew from before, the man who used to be—who was—my dad.”

The emotion of that memory stung deep and interrupted Ryan’s train of thought. Putting all of this into words was much harder than he’d expected, and the rigid seats of the Ferris wheel and the noise of the festival weren’t making his job any easier.

Amy might have been reading his mind. She broke the silence and suggested they hop off and go someplace else, somewhere a little quieter. “If you’re happy to walk and talk, why don’t we go down to the beach?”

“Perfect,” he said.

After exiting their carriage and stepping off the gangway, they fled the festival and headed in the direction of a narrow, sand-blown road that connected the town square to the beach. When they reached the end, they climbed over the dunes and began walking up the beach, the soles of their shoes sinking into the soft sand. They headed toward the outcrop at the northern tip, where the lighthouse stood. Neither one of them was paying any attention to the weather, or bothering to notice that the sky, clear and starlit since nightfall, had suddenly clouded over and gone black.

Amid the sound of crashing waves, with his hands stuffed in his pockets, Ryan resumed his story.

“Anyhow, Wednesday morning, week six of therapy, that’s when the bombshell dropped.”

“What happened?” Amy asked as she stepped closer to him to avoid the advancing water.

“This man in a suit came to see me. He was from the insurance company. His name escapes me now, probably because I’ve blanked it out, but he came to the hospital and was there to inform me that, in line with the conditions of our policy, coverage for my father’s treatment had been canceled. They were pulling the plug on his care. We had seventy-two hours, and then we needed to be gone.”

“Seriously? Throwing you out, just like that?”

“According to them, it was in my father’s best interests that his therapy be discontinued and that the focus of his care be shifted toward managing his quality of life.”

“What did that mean?”