“Guilty,” he said.
The next few weeks were a strange kind of beautiful.
We went to Mark’s neurologist together. Dr. Patel, a small, brisk woman with kind eyes who shook my hand and said, “I’m glad you’re here, Mrs. Ellison. I told him he should bring you in March.”
“Did you?” I said, looking at Mark.
“Several times,” said Dr. Patel.
Mark looked at the ceiling.
She explained everything again. The medicines. The stages. What we could expect, and what we couldn’t. She told us about routines. Labels on cabinets. A whiteboard calendar in the kitchen. A GPS tracker on his phone. No more driving, she said, after what happened on Route 9. Not ever.
Mark took that one hard. He was quiet the whole ride home.
When we pulled into the driveway, he sat in the passenger seat looking at his truck parked by the garage. Dave had brought it back that Wednesday and left the keys under the mat.
