Two years later, Dad asked me why my brother had left before dessert that Christmas. I told him he had been tired, but Dad shook his head and said, “No, he was afraid.” I asked what he meant, and he looked at me for a long time before saying he remembered what my brother had whispered to him in the kitchen. I had never known they had been alone together. Then Dad asked me whether I knew what my brother had said before he walked out.
I didn’t. Dad said my brother had asked him if he remembered a particular year, and when Dad couldn’t answer, my brother had started crying. He had apparently realized that Dad wasn’t simply forgetting names — he was forgetting the years when my brother had needed him most. My brother had told him something I’d never heard before, and Dad repeated the sentence almost word for word. Then he looked at me and said, “He thinks I don’t remember, but I do.”
That night I called my brother and asked him what had happened in the kitchen. He didn’t answer for almost a minute, and then he said, “Dad wasn’t supposed to tell you.” I asked him what he’d asked Dad, and he finally admitted he’d wanted to know whether Dad remembered why he had stopped coming home when we were children. I thought he meant something from our childhood, but then he said the words that changed everything: “I wasn’t asking him about me. I was asking him about Mom.”
