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She made no attempt to hide her surprise.

I’ve never complained to Merry about Kyle, never let on that I am in any way disgruntled.

She is a bottomless pit when it comes to her hunger for this type of gossip, and I’ve refused to feed her.

But a part of me felt validated to hear her surprise, to know that she saw me as the one carrying the weight of everything alone.

“Yes, he’s quite capable,” I said, though I wasn’t at all sure of this. “He is their father, after all.”

Merry is from a generation that does not understand the expectations of modern fatherhood. Modern fathers also do not seem to understand the expectations.

“We’d love to see you, Nikki,” Dad said.

“Okay, I’ll talk to Kyle and let you know when I’ll come. But soon, okay?”

“Thank you, Nic,” Merry said, her voice suddenly saccharine. “Tell Kyle and the girls we send our love.”

I told her I would right as I heard the garage door open, Kyle and the girls back from the quickest trip to the ice cream shop ever recorded by man.

As I packed my small suitcase, I felt something like a thrill, akin to the thrill I felt when packing for my first big trip with Kyle—to Las Vegas of all places.

I met Kyle my sophomore year of college in a very typical way.

We were both at a bar in downtown Providence.

I was attending RISD, fancying myself a renowned photographer in the making.

He was at Brown, fancying himself rich and successful by any means possible.

Over those first drinks, he told me how he’d grown up poor, how he got a scholarship to Brown, how he was determined to make a good life for himself.

He was very handsome, could have passed for Keanu Reeves’s blue-eyed brother, but I was most attracted to his drive.

He had a seriousness about him, a maturity.

Most of the guys I knew at RISD smoked weed and laughed at the concept of a five-year plan.

My dad had always told me to find a guy with a five-year plan. Kyle had a ten-year one.

When we turned twenty-one, Kyle wanted to go to Vegas.

It was something he’d just always wanted to do, he said.

I knew it wouldn’t be my scene, but I wanted to be a cool girlfriend, so we went.

I felt besieged the entire time—too many sounds, too many sights—but Kyle was like a kid at Disneyland, so I held my breath for the weekend and put a smile on my face.

(As a side note: no one tells you that, in terms of overstimulation, every day is Vegas when you’re a mother.)

I suppose I am partially to blame for our marital problems. We were so young when we met.

Our brains weren’t even fully developed.

I did what so many women do—in the absence of my own identity, I accommodated his.

How can he be expected to understand my needs when I spent years pretending I didn’t have any?

Now, what felt like three hundred years after that Vegas trip, I was packing to leave Kyle (and the offspring I had created with him) to visit my elderly dad and stepmom in Daly City, just outside San Francisco.

I felt that flutter of excitement that comes with embarking on something new.

It wasn’t the place that was new—I’d lived there, after all—but the freedom.

A plane ticket, even for just myself, was too much money to rationalize, but I was looking forward to the drive, pondering taking the long route, along the coast, just to enjoy extra time to myself.

It was Friday afternoon, a few days after I’d talked to my dad and Merry.

I was waiting for Kyle to officially finish his workday before I could get on the road.

The girls were basket cases, not taking well to the idea of me leaving them.

“Daddy doesn’t know how to do anything,” Grace moaned, which was a sound objection.

Liv wailed, flopping her little body onto the floor while I packed.

It was like they were in competition to show me which one of them was in more distress.

I’d be lying if I said the whole show didn’t flatter my ego.

“You two will be fine. I’ll be back Sunday night. That’s in two days,” I said.

I hugged them, their bodies side by side, my arms wrapped around them.

When I let go, they were caricatures of sad people, their little mouths downturned, their eyes somehow larger than usual, cheeks tear streaked.

My stomach clenched, and I briefly considered canceling my trip, but decided this was as good for them as it was for me.

As one of my recent parenting books reminded me, I am modeling motherhood for them.

If they decide to become mothers, I want them to know it’s okay if they have lives and desires and needs separate from those of their children.

I zipped my suitcase and took it to the front door. Grace and Liv followed me, Grace stepping on my heels, Liv grasping onto my pant leg.

“You all packed?” Kyle asked.

“I think so.”

I’m sure he didn’t love the idea of me being out of town, but when aging parents and medical issues are involved, one must, for lack of a better term, suck it up. This must be in a marital handbook somewhere.

He looked at his watch. “You better get going, or you’ll be driving till midnight.”

I sighed, feigning apprehension, when really I could not wait to get out that door and into my car and on the road. The anticipation of freedom was making me all buzzy inside. I tried to control myself, to hide my ecstasy.

“I’ll text you when I get there,” I told him.

He nodded.

“Noooooooooo,” Grace said, and Liv joined in.

They each attached themselves to a leg with palpable desperation. I knelt down and pulled the three of us into another embrace, our faces smashed together.

I gave them each sloppy kisses on the cheeks and said, “I love you, you little boogers.”

That made them laugh. When in doubt, say boogers .

“I’m not a booger. Liv is a booger,” Grace said.

“Grace is booger,” Liv said.

They were howling with happiness, which was my cue to leave.

“Drive safe,” Kyle said.

“I will.”

I blew the requisite kisses, and then I was out the door.

Free.

Daly City is somewhere people live when they can’t afford San Francisco.

It’s only twenty minutes from downtown, just south of the Outer Mission.

When I was a kid, I felt like a loser for living there.

My dad probably could have afforded to live in San Francisco proper—he was a reputable dentist, and Merry managed his busy practice, before they sold the business and retired—but they always said they liked being on the outskirts, away from the “hullaballoo.” They shelled out for me to go to a private high school near Golden Gate Park, so all my friends were rich and brilliant and gave me a complex that I carry with me to this day.

It took me eight hours to get up there. When I pulled up to the house, Merry was standing by the front door, waiting.

“You made it,” she said.

I gave her a hug. Hugs with Merry have always been awkward.

She is not the affectionate type. I’ve always longed for the mothers from sitcoms who embrace their children with ferocity, mothers who say things like “You’re my favorite human,” things I say to Grace and Liv all the time.

It would be easy to assume that Merry just never felt it was appropriate for a stepmom to say those sitcom-mom things, but I think the truth is that she doesn’t have it in her.

She never had her own kids, for reasons I’ve never investigated.

One time she mentioned, randomly, “I’m not a touchy person. My parents were German.”

“I made it,” I said.

“Who’s there?” my dad called from upstairs.

“It’s Nicole, Rob,” Merry said.

She looked at me and shook her head. “I just told him that you would be here soon.”

The house was warm because Merry is always cold and sets the thermostat at seventy-seven at all times. Unlike mine, her perimenopause days are long behind her.

“I’ve got your room ready for you upstairs,” she said, as if she were a hotel manager.

She insisted on taking my suitcase, and I followed her up the stairs and to my old bedroom, which was painted and turned into a guest room about five seconds after I left for college.

She set my suitcase on top of the queen-size bed and said, “This will do, right?”

“Mer, of course it will do. It was my bedroom for eighteen years.”

“I guess that’s true, isn’t it?”

“It is.”

I found it hard to remember what it had been like as my room.

I’d had artwork and Polaroid photos taped or tacked to the walls.

It was very me . Or the me I used to be.

I thought of the face Kyle would make if I came home and insisted on covering every inch of the walls with visual inspiration. He would have me committed.

“Dad’s in bed?” I asked.

“He is,” she said. “Just to warn you, he’s even worse at night.”

I followed her to their bedroom. The TV was on, an infomercial for a food processor that was described as “revolutionary.” My dad was sitting up against the headboard in his boxer shorts and a T-shirt, his legs stretched out in front of him. He looked like he’d lost weight.

“Hey, Pops,” I said.

He turned, and there was shock on his face when he saw me.

“Nikki! What are you doing here?”

Merry sighed loudly behind me.

“I decided to come visit, remember?”

“You did? Are you pulling my leg? Is this a surprise?”

“I guess it’s a surprise for you,” I said, forcing a laugh.

He swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood.

“Well, let me give my girl a hug.”

That’s when he took a step in my direction, and I saw immediately that something was very wrong. He looked like someone walking on the deck of a boat in rough waters.

He teetered from one foot to the other with each step, his gait unstable and staggering. I looked to Merry, my mouth agape, tears coming at just the sight of him. She looked at me like See, I told you .

When he finally made his way to me, he wrapped his arms around me with the strength and tightness that Merry never gave me. He was warm and solid, and I buried my face into his shoulder, drying my eyes on his shirt. I didn’t want him to see me upset.

“Daddy, what’s wrong with your legs?” I asked him.

“Oh, I don’t know. My balance is off.”

“I think we need to take you to the doctor.”

“Don’t worry about me, Nikki. I’ll get better.”

“But we don’t even know what’s wrong with you,” I said.

Though I knew. I was sure I knew. The words kept flashing in my head— Brain. Tumor.

He hugged me tighter. “Let’s talk in the morning, okay? It’s late.”

I nodded. I felt so much like a little girl in that moment, a little girl being told by her all-knowing father that she needed to get some sleep.

I kissed his cheek and then walked back to my room, Merry behind me.

“Why haven’t you taken him to the hospital?” I asked her. I tried to temper my tone, but couldn’t help but sound accusatory.

She looked flabbergasted.

“He doesn’t think anything is wrong! You saw him!”

“But something is seriously wrong,” I said.

She looked like she was going to cry. That’s when it occurred to me that she wasn’t taking him to the doctor because she knew something was seriously wrong, and she didn’t want to know that, not for sure.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I know it’s hard.”

She stared past me. “My father, he had Alzheimer’s. It was just ... awful.”

I had vague memories of when her father had been sick. I was a teenager at the time, completely self-absorbed. A wave of guilt washed over me as I considered how Merry had continued caring for me during that time, keeping me blind to whatever horrors she was encountering.

I put my hand on her arm.

“I don’t think it’s Alzheimer’s,” I said. “It’s something else.”

“What do you think it is?” she asked me. Her voice was small, and suddenly, of the two of us, she was the child.

“I don’t know. I’ll take him to the hospital at UCSF tomorrow. I have an old friend who works there. Remember Prisha Patel from high school? She’s a doctor there. Anyway, I’ll figure it out. We’ll figure it out, okay?”

Her eyes were big and scared.

“I can go with you,” she said. “To the hospital.”

I could tell she didn’t want to, though. She seemed terror stricken at the prospect.

“Let me handle it for you, okay?”

She looked past me again, then found my eyes with hers.

“Okay,” she said finally.

“Dad’s right, though. We should all get some sleep.”

With that, she turned and went back down the hallway to their bedroom.

I didn’t bother washing my face or brushing my teeth.

I just stripped down to my underwear, put on a sweatshirt, and lay down, staring at the ceiling.

When I got immediately overheated, I took off the sweatshirt and just lay bare chested, beads of sweat dotting my breasts.

I texted Kyle.

Sorry, forgot to text you when I got here. I’m here

While I waited for a response, I sent a message to Prisha on Facebook, asking her what to do about my dad, then swiped through photos of the girls on my phone.

Thousands of photos, thousands of moments when I thought I just have to capture this , thousands of reminders of motherhood’s magic.

As eager as I was for time away from them, I already missed them.

Or maybe miss isn’t the right word. It’s more that it felt wrong that they were not near me, a troubling discordance.

Prisha responded before Kyle did, suggested I bring my dad in through the ER at UCSF.

The teaching hospitals leave no stone unturned. They’ll likely admit him, given the symptoms.

I sighed. That would be my day tomorrow—the ER.

Ten minutes later, Kyle still hadn’t responded.

He was probably already asleep, exhausted after enduring the battle that is the Bedtime Routine.

Grace had started doing something I called the Wet Noodle at bedtime, where she let her entire body go limp and refused to assist me with putting on her pajamas.

It was like trying to dress a corpse. I thought of Liv throwing her usual tantrum when presented with a toothbrush.

I thought of them requesting “one more book” ad infinitum.

Kyle was normally in the other room, “wrapping up some work,” during these shenanigans.

He must have heard the pandemonium, but didn’t step in to help.

Was it all white noise to him? Was he that confident I had it handled?

It was awful of me, but I hoped the girls were giving him an especially hard time.

I hoped they would call for him thirty-seven times during the night, asking him to fix the blankets.

You might think that realizing what a terrible person I am would have kept me up all night.

But no. Somehow, I fell asleep and didn’t wake up until nine the next morning.