“It’s Lulu,” I said, not sure if I was reminding her or myself. Who was I if I didn’t have Gram on my side? Her voice was with me always. Telling me how special I was, how brave, how beautiful. An empty space under my ribs opened up. It tugged on my heart like it was trying to pull it out of place and swallow it whole.

“Lulu,” she repeated in a whisper. “Lulu. Yes.”

The moment she snapped back, her eyes locked on me like lasers. And the empty space under my ribs closed right back up.

It was nothing. I repeated that over and over every day since.

She was tired and I’d only imagined it.

But then she burned Clay’s sandwich and forgot where we parked at the mall. And a dozen other small things piled one on top of another. Little nothings that became one big something.

4. Hippo Brain

There’s a small part of the brain called the hippocampus, which makes me imagine a hippopotamus stomping around in the middle of my skull. That would explain why memories are so random. Why you remember some and not others.

Only, the hippocampus doesn’t look a thing like a hippo. It’s shaped like a seahorse, and it helps us remember things like where our home is. Something that might seem easy.

One of the first symptoms of Alzheimer’s is forgetting where things are. Maybe at first it’s where you park. Pretty soon it’s something more, maybe even people. There’s no cure for it yet. Once you get it, you start losing your memory in bits and pieces until eventually you don’t remember anyone or anything.

I plop down at the kitchen table and grab a homemade blueberry muffin. Gram bakes the best muffins. “I have a plan,” I say, and I take a humongous bite that slowly melts in my mouth.

Gram cuts up a pear for Clay, each slice as precise and efficient as she is. Her hair is curled, her makeup perfect, everything just so. Maybe I’m worrying too much. Maybe yesterday was just a bad day.

“I’m sure you do.” A faint smile softens the stern lines of her face.

When Gram first moved in with us, I was a little afraid of her. Everything about her seemed rigid and strict. But she’d won me over within days—she never forgot to pick me up, she always did what she said, and she didn’t just say she loved me. She showed it.

Gram knew my teachers’ names and Olivia’s favorite snack. She read to Clay and me, told us stories about Dad when he was young. And she listened to me. Nothing I said bored her or made her impatient.