The Girl Who Brings the Coffee

What I was carrying

I had not planned to do it. But I got up and went to the drawer by the fridge, the one where everybody keeps the takeout menus and rubber bands, and took out the spiral notebook I had kept for a year.

I set it down between them. It was a green Mead notebook, the kind Tanner uses for school. It was almost full.

“What’s this?” Mike said.

“Every morning,” I said. “Since last August. What time I got there. What he ate. Whether the stove was on. Whether he took his pills. Whether he knew me.”

Mike opened it. I watched him read the first page, and then turn to the middle, and then keep turning.

“August twelfth,” he read out loud, slowly. “Stove knob on low under empty pan. Dad thought I was Mom. Asked if the boys were home from school yet.”

He turned more pages. “October third. Called me at 3:10 a.m. Said someone was in the house. Drove over. No one there. Sat with him till 5:30, then went to route.”

Scott had taken the notebook from him now. He read a page silently and then put his hand over his mouth.

“January ninth,” Scott said. “Minus twenty two. Dad’s furnace out. Found him in the recliner in his parka. Called Pete. Pete fixed the igniter. Dad said not to tell the boys, they would worry.”

He looked up at me. “He said not to tell us?”

“Every time,” I said. “Every single time, Scotty. He made me promise. You two were the ones he wanted to look good for.”

The wrong I did

Mike sat back in his chair. He looked older to me than he had a week before. I thought about Karen, at home, bald from the chemo, and what this must have cost him to drive out tonight.

“Why didn’t you tell us?” he said. “Lori. Why didn’t you tell us any of this?”

And here is the part that makes me look less right, and I am going to say it anyway, because it’s true.

“Because you had Karen,” I said. “And Scott had Denver. And because I was a little proud of it, if I’m honest. Being the one who knew. Being the one he needed. You two always got the paper. I got the mornings, and I didn’t want to share them.”

It was quiet at the table for a while. The clock over the stove ticked. Dad snored in the other room.

“That’s not fair to you, though,” Scott said finally. “That you did it alone. We would have helped.”

“Would you?” I asked, and I didn’t say it mean. I meant it as a real question. “Scott, what would you have done from Denver?”

He thought about it. I’ll give him that. He actually thought about it instead of answering right away.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Money, maybe. I don’t know. But I would have wanted to know.”

“Prairie Rose was the only thing we knew to do,” Mike said. “The doctor in Fargo said memory care. The social worker said memory care. Karen’s oncologist’s nurse has her mother there. I read every review. I toured it twice. I thought I was doing right by him.”

“I know you did,” I said. “I know you thought that.”