I was at the 24-hour pharmacy counter at 2:47 in the morning, picking up my father's blood pressure medication. The fluorescent lights buzzed like they knew I hadn't slept.
I was still wearing the wristband from the Franklin County Fair. Three weeks old, fraying at the edges. My daughter had won it at the ring toss the weekend before she left for college.
The pharmacist asked for his name and date of birth, and I gave them without thinking. Arthur, 1948. I'd been reciting those numbers for six months now, ever since he moved in with me.
I heard someone say my name from behind me. Mrs. Calloway, my old choir director from high school, standing there in a rumpled coat with a box of sleep aids.
She looked at me and said, "You look exactly like him, you know." She meant my father. She'd directed him in the church choir twenty years ago, before his voice started going.
I hadn't cried about any of it until then. Not the diagnosis, not the move, not the mornings he calls me by my brother's name.
Mrs. Calloway didn't say anything else. She just stood with me until the prescription was ready, then walked me to my car in the parking lot.