Our parents had done everything together, from puttering around the house to working in the garden. Dad would rake leaves, Mom would prepare lunch, and they’d sit in the living room in the late afternoon, reading ebooks together. At night they’d stream a movie or go into town for dinner. They were that rare and beautiful couple, almost nonexistent nowadays, lifelong companions and best friends. Then, suddenly, there was only Dad: calling to tell us Mom was gone, making funeral arrangements without us, stern-faced through the service, telling everyone he was fine, just fine.

I’d tried to help during the funeral—I cooked, cleaned the house, washed dishes, had planned to stay an extra week—but Dad pushed Nin and me away. Everything was fine, he told us, we girls should head home, no use staying at the house when we had our own lives to live. And after two days, he said we needed to go. What could we do? Nin left, driving the three hours back to her apartment in Toledo, and I flew back to Boulder, where Theo and the kids were waiting. Two weeks later, Nin called to tell me about finding Dad by the bushes.

Nin picked me up from the airport. Besides the funeral, the last time we’d been home together was when I was finishing my grad degree and she was completing her freshman year as an undergrad. We’d argued about something dumb—an anthropology course she hated—I’d called her narrow-minded, and she’d called me a patronizing bitch. After that we hadn’t spoken for years. I was hoping grief might help us mend the distance, but when she picked me up she was being her annoying self, asking me about my flight while simultaneously flicking her eyes to send texts in her contacts as she drove.

“Uh-huh,” she commented when I told her how the kids were doing, and laughed suddenly at a video in the corner of her eye. So, instead of continuing, I sat in the passenger seat hating how ADHD her generation was.

“If Dad’s got dementia,” she said, “you’re going to have to move home. I can’t handle this alone.”

“He’s just grieving,” I said. I couldn’t imagine uprooting everything and moving back to the Midwest. We had our jobs, the kids’ school, never mind living in suburban Ohio, a place Nin might be able to survive but not a place I wanted to return to.