Page 145 of The Love Operation

I look to my mother. She nods but lets my dad continue. “I think we were both in denial. She’s still young, but . . . they confirmed early-stage Alzheimer’s a few weeks ago.”

“And you didn’t tell me?”

“I wanted to, but . . .” He glances at my mom.

“I asked him not to,” she says.

“So . . . what? You were just never going to tell me?” My voice cracks. “You let me find out like this?”

“I didn’t know you were coming,” Dad says. “We were going to tell you, Maggie, and Everett at dinner last weekend. But when you said you couldn’t come, we decided to wait.”

“We also wanted to wait until after the chief decision,” Mom adds. “We didn’t want to destabilize you.”

Dad exhales. “Then we realized we probably couldn’t wait. I’m sorry you had to find out this way.”

My hands are shaking. I press them into my thighs, trying to ground myself in something, anything.

“I could have helped,” I say. “I will help.” I glance between them. “Are you on Aricept? What neurologist are you seeing? Have you done cognitive baseline testing? Have you—”

“Cordelia, stop,” Dad says.

My head jerks back. “Stop what? Caring?”

“Controlling,” Dad says, voice firm now—like when I caught them filming TikToks. “It’s not just the chief job. We didn’t tell you because we knew what you’d do. You’d make appointments. Push for second opinions. Build a treatment plan before your mom had a chance to even accept it.” He sighs. “We needed a little time to just be . . . us. Before we became a diagnosis. Before we became someone our kids had to take care of.”

I blink, try to process. Then I look at my mom. Her face—the way she tucks her lower lip into her mouth, the way her eyes pinch at the edges—confirms it.

“We don’t need a doctor right now,” Dad says. “We need our daughter.”

I let out a bitter laugh that tastes more like salt than sound. “Obviously, you don’t.”

And then it hits me like a wall. A wall they just built between us.

I can’t be their daughter right now because they haven’t let me. They shut me out.

I can’t breathe.

And the only way I know how to cope—with action—is the one thing they don’t want.

“I think I should go,” I hear myself say.

“Cordelia.” My dad’s voice is desperate, but I see my mom touch his arm, stopping him.

She’s letting me go because she knows I can’t stay. Not like this. Not when I need to move, and they need to sit still.

I move without seeing, through the patio door, across the house, out the front door, into my car.

Somehow I drive.

I sit in my driveway, unable to get out of the car.

And then irony hits me so hard I fold forward and press my forehead into the steering wheel.

While my mother’s memories slip away, mine have never been clearer.

Somehow . . . it feels like I’m stealing them from her.

A knock on the window jolts me.