Page 93 of When Lemons Give You Life

“What do you need to tell me, Beau? There’s no rush, take your time.”

“No. There’s no time. That’s what I need. I’m running out. See?” He reaches across the table and pulls out a scrawled shopping list in small shaky handwriting.

Lemons

Butter

Tissues

Time

He taps the last word and laughs, a thin, broken sound, and presses a hand to his temple as if the memory itself hurts. “I wanted to fix it. Thought I could still . . . but it’s gone. It’s gone.”

The silence is unbearable. The clock ticks loudly in the corner, steady and cruel.

He looks back at me, his expression naked with sorrow. “I’m sorry, Lisa. I wanted to tell you while I still could.”

“Tell me what, sweetheart? I’m here for you.”

“I . . . don’t know. I think maybe I’ve done the wrong thing. But I’m not sure. I’m so sorry. I tried to make it better.”

Something inside me splinters. He’s deteriorated rapidly since I saw him last; the flu kept me away for a month.

I reach across the table and wrap my hand around his. He squeezes tight, as if he might drift away if I let go. I smile, because I don’t know what else to do, though it feels jagged on my face.

“It’s alright, Beau. Don’t worry about it.”

But it’s not alright. Nothing about this is alright.

My Beau. My best friend. Sitting across from me tonight, apologizing for words his mind can no longer hold. Looking at me like he’d failed me, when the only thing to blame was this cruel disease stripping him away piece by piece.

The tears prick my eyes before I can stop them. I turn my face, biting down on my lip, desperate not to let him see. But it’s useless—they spill anyway, hot and sudden.

His thumb brushes clumsily over my knuckles.

“What’s wrong, my darling Lisa? What’s happened?”

“I’m okay,” I whisper, shaking my head, forcing another smile. “I’ve just . . . lost something, or I’m losing it, that’s all.”

He frowns, earnest as a child. “Don’t worry, lovely, I’ll help you look for it.”

Beau bends down, searching under the table, as if his memories, our years of friendship, might be there like a dropped pen. He doesn’t even know what I’m missing, yet he’s still trying to give it back to me.

Daylight fades, swallowed whole by the waiting dark. But I don’t turn on the light and neither does Beau. At least he can’t see my tears as I hold his fragile hand in both of mine and stay there with him, waiting for Griff to come home.

60

Lisa

The letter is back in the box, shoved under the workbench beside an inflatable unicorn pool toy and a tangled pile of Christmas lights I don’t even own attachments for. Out of sight, but not out of mind.

I’ve changed my shirt. Washed my face. Made tea I haven’t drunk. I stare at the steam rising from the mug like it might spell out the next step. Because I honestly don’t know what I’m meant to do. What anyone would do, really, after finding out their brother could have saved their mother yet chose not to.

But the part that keeps looping in my brain—worse than the betrayal—is this dreadful, embarrassing ache of realization: I was still waiting for him to fix things before I could become whole.

Even now. Even with the dementia. After everything. Some part of me still believed that, when it really mattered, Griff would show up. That he would approve of me. That deep down, the version of him I’d clung to—the big brother who secretly admired me, who thought I was clever and capable and worth loving—might still be real. That he’d swoop in. Save me. See me.

And he won’t. Not just because he can’t. Because when he could, he didn’t.