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He softened. “I am, but I wasn’t always. By the time I was eight, I realized that he treated you differently. He brought you gifts from business trips. He took you bowling. He helped you with your Girl Scout badges.”

He was right, but I felt disloyal to my dad agreeing with him. “He did stuff with you too,” I said.

“Like what?”

I thought for a moment. “He went to all your soccer games.”

“I played in one soccer game, then I quit. So yes, he came to my soccer game. Mostly he ignored me and doted on you.”

I’d convinced myself that Jerry was cold and selfish, but maybe I was the selfish one. I liked having Dad to myself. I didn’t want a sibling when I was six years old. “Do you blame me for that?” I asked.

“I blamed you both. I never thought he liked me, and I tried many times to win him over. I even went to law school because I was hoping that it would give us something to talk about, but instead he said he didn’t like talking about work outside the courtroom.”

“I’m sorry. It’s not too late to fix things,” I said.

“When Dad got what we thought was Parkinson’s, I started coming to see him more. I hoped we could work through things, but he spent most of the time talking about you.”

“That won’t be an issue anymore, because now he’s replaced me with a different Maggie.”

“Is this one nicer?”

“Ha, ha.” I saw my little brother in a way I’d never seen him. He was just as vulnerable as I was. “I wish we’d talked like this a long time ago,” I said. “Maybe we could’ve been closer.”

“Right. I was going to be closer to the person who tried to squish me under her trundle bed when I was three?”

“You and Mom are never going to let me live that down.”

“Nope. That or when you told Mom and Dad that my friends and I drank half their vodka and filled the rest of the bottle with water.” He smacked me lightly on the back of the head, and we laughed.

“What did the doctor tell you today about Dad’s condition?” I asked.

“The disease is progressing faster than expected, and the average life expectancy after the onset of symptoms is five to eight years. Since Dad’s been having undiagnosed symptoms for a few years, the doctor isn’t overly optimistic.”

I walked outside Brooklawn feeling even worse, if that were possible. The sky was a piercing blue with one ominous dark cloud. A grand elm tree stood in the middle of the lawn, its branches reaching out, offering me comfort beneath them. As I slid down its trunk to sit on the grass underneath, I didn’t notice the leftover patch of snow. Feeling a small, wet spot against my skin caused my emotional dam to burst. I was a tearful woman loitering outside an old age home with a soggy butt.

When I stood up, I noticed Michael’s faded red van, with one perfect dent in the rear passenger side, pulling into the circular driveway. He began taking suitcases and boxes out of the van. Charlotte was standing with her walker next to the suitcases. She looked like a scared child. Michael was distracted and hadn’t noticed me, which was good because I didn’t know what I was going to say to him. He’d texted me three times over the last week, and I hadn’t texted him back. I was dealing with so much, and hearing him say he had a girlfriend was only going to make me feel worse.

Charlotte called out my name; she was relieved to see a familiar face. I walked toward them, holding my purse against my wet rear end.

“Hey,” Michael said, giving me a now familiar hug. “I’ve been texting you.”

“I know,” I said.

He looked at me the way no one else had in a long time. He knew something was wrong. “You okay?” he whispered. I shook my head. I couldn’t say anything because I thought my voice would betray my sorrow.

“Let me get my mom settled and then we can talk,” he said.

He went back to unloading the van and I walked with Charlotte inside Brooklawn. We sat in her empty room, not saying much. She was overwhelmed with the move and was happy not to make small talk. Michael filled up the room with her belongings. He’d brought as many things as he could from home to help her feel more comfortable. He put a picture of her and Michael’s father on the nightstand. Then he put a wornout stuffed bear on her bed, and a quilt that had pictures of her parents and sisters appliquéd on it but had a small tear at the bottom. There were also three huge suitcases with more clothes in them than she could ever need.

Lila, a slightly younger but even more bent-over version of Charlotte, came into the room. She wanted to meet another newbie. We all exchanged hellos. Lila used to be an English teacher. She started talking and didn’t stop the entire time Michael was arranging Charlotte’s clothes in her closet. Charlotte seemed comforted by Lila’s voice, but I wanted to smack her when she started to explain the difference between the wordhomophobeandhomophone. When everything was unpacked, Lila convinced Charlotte to go with her to the activity room, leaving Michael and me on our own.

“Do you want to go across the street and grab some coffee?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said.

“Let me move the van out of the driveway, and I’ll meet you over there.”

The Coffee Station used to be an old gas station with an am-pm mini mart. It had been turned into a bakery and coffee house about ten years ago. I was bringing my dad scones from there, but then he started leaving them on his table to feed the kangaroos he hallucinated.