PART 6 – Emma Brought Questions We Could Not Answer With Reassurance Alone !!
Emma arrived on Saturday carrying groceries.
She had bought Mark’s favorite pears.
She had also bought a notebook with green covers.
“For appointments,” she said.
He looked at the notebook.
“Am I a school project?”
She flinched.
I watched her set the pears on the counter.
“No. You’re my dad.”
She turned toward the door.
“I’m going to get the rest of the bags.”
I followed her to the porch.
She stood by her car, gripping the handle of a shopping bag.
“He makes it impossible to help.”
“He’s frightened.”
“So am I.”
She said it without raising her voice.
I stopped trying to explain him.
“What do you need?”
“I need you to stop saying it’s going to be okay when none of us knows.”
I looked back at the house.
“That’s fair.”
We carried the groceries inside.
Mark was washing pears at the sink.
He had noticed our faces.
“I was rude,” he said.
Emma nodded.
“Yeah.”
He dried his hands.
“I didn’t mean to be.”
“I know.”
She set the green notebook on the table.
“We can use this. Or we can use something else.”
Mark opened it.
On the first page she had written: QUESTIONS I WANT TO ASK.
The rest was blank.
He smiled a little.
“That’s better.”
We spent the afternoon asking questions we had been avoiding.
Would Mark be able to keep working?
Would the medicine help?
Could we afford the house if the business income fell?
Could Emma inherit a higher risk of the disease?
Did we need to tell the rest of our families?
Would he be able to stay at home?
We wrote every question down.
We did not turn guesses into promises.
The neurologist had told us that family history and genetic risk were complicated.
We agreed that Emma could ask for genetic counseling if she wanted individualized guidance.
We wouldn’t use a commercial test to frighten ourselves with incomplete answers.
When she asked whether Mark wanted her to move home, he shook his head.
“No.”
“I could help with appointments.”
“You can visit. You can call. You don’t have to become my keeper.”
A customer named Mrs. Keller called after Priya found the duplicate invoice.
I expected her to be furious.
She sounded confused.
“Mark has always been so careful,” she said.
“I know.”
I explained that our records needed correction and that the accountant had identified the duplicate.
I sent written confirmation that afternoon.
She thanked me for calling instead of waiting for her to notice.
Then she asked whether Mark was all right.
I looked toward the garage, where he was standing beside a workbench.
“He’s dealing with a health issue,” I said. “We’re adjusting how the office is run.”
She was quiet.
“Tell him I still love the porch he built.”
I wrote that on a sticky note.
Later I brought it to him.
He read it twice.
There was a morning when Mark asked to read the company’s old customer letters.
I took a box down from the shelf.
We sat at the table with envelopes spread between us.
Some customers had written to thank him for arriving during storms.
Others had enclosed photographs of finished rooms.
One letter came from a family whose kitchen he had repaired after a water leak.
They had included a crayon drawing by their daughter.
Mark stared at the picture.
“I remember this house.”
He described a stubborn pipe behind the wall.
The details came easily.
Then he could not remember what month it was.
I pointed to the calendar and we moved on.
He read another letter and smiled.
For an hour, the box was not evidence of what he had lost.
It was proof of work he had actually done.
We chose several letters to photograph for the family album.
He insisted on leaving the originals in the box.
“Somebody might want to see them,” he said.
I put them back in order.
When Luis called that afternoon, Mark told him about the old letters.
Luis said he wanted to keep a small archive for the workshop.
Mark offered to help choose what belonged there.
I wrote down the idea while he was still enthusiastic.
Not every plan had to be finished that day.
Sometimes writing it down was enough.
“Mrs. Keller,” he said. “Blue house with white shutters.”
“Yes.”
“She wanted the railing low enough to see her garden.”
He remembered the detail perfectly.
I asked whether he wanted to call her.
He shook his head.
“Not today.”
He folded the sticky note and put it in his pocket.
A week later, when he felt more confident, we called together.
He thanked her for the kind words.
She told him her roses were blooming.
The conversation lasted four minutes.
Afterward he sat smiling at the kitchen table.
It had been good for him.
It also reminded me that the business was not merely a set of numbers.
It was years of work in houses and neighborhoods all around us.
Emma looked at me.
I said, “We’ll arrange practical help as we need it.”
It sounded sensible.
I wasn’t sure how we would pay for everything.
After lunch, Mark and Emma went into the backyard.
He showed her the tomato plants.
He could still identify every variety.
He remembered when her sixth-grade science project had killed an entire tray of seedlings.
She laughed so hard she had to lean on the fence.
I watched them from the kitchen window.
That was the difficulty.
He was still himself in a hundred ordinary ways.
His humor was the same.
He still knew how much cinnamon belonged in apple pie.
He still disliked the neighbor’s leaf blower.
And some mornings he could not remember a conversation from the night before.
We learned not to measure an entire future by one good afternoon.
Later Emma asked to speak to me alone.
She had found a support group for younger families facing dementia.
“They meet online and in person.”
“Do you want us to go?”
“I want you to have somebody other than me.”
I began to protest.
She held up her hand.
“You called me from the hospital, Mom. Of course you should call me. But I can’t be available every hour.”
Her words hurt because they were true.
She was twenty-three.
She had a job, friends, and a life of her own.
Her father’s illness would change her life.
It should not swallow it.
That evening I told Mark I wanted to attend the group.
He frowned.
“Will they talk about me?”
“I’ll talk about what I’m experiencing.”
“That’s talking about me.”
“Yes,” I said. “Sometimes I need to.”
He thought about it.
“Can I have my own group?”
I showed him the information for people living with early-stage memory disorders.
He read it closely.
“Maybe.”
I didn’t push.
Before bed he opened the wooden box.
He held our old ring between two fingers.
“I really did mean to give you a new one.”
I sat beside him.
“I believe you.”
“Do you want it?”
“Only if you want to give it.”
He put the old band away.
“The new one isn’t finished.”
“We have time to pick it up.”
He looked at me.
“Don’t say that unless we do it.”
So I wrote the jewelry shop’s number on the refrigerator calendar, beside Tuesday’s appointment.
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