## The Things Children Forget

“Dad.”

Arthur kept walking.

Slowly.

His steps were smaller than Daniel remembered.

“Dad, wait.”

This time Arthur stopped.

Daniel approached him, but the apology sitting inside his chest refused to come out.

He had spent most of the last year frustrated with his father.

Arthur forgot appointments.

He called Daniel twice to ask the same question.

Once he left milk inside a kitchen cabinet.

Another time Daniel found him standing in the garage, unable to remember why he had gone there.

Every incident frightened Daniel.

And every time he became frightened, he became angry.

“Why didn’t you just wait by the entrance?” Daniel asked, softer now.

Arthur stared toward the supermarket.

“I thought I knew where the car was.”

“It was on the other side.”

“I know that now.”

Arthur looked embarrassed.

That hurt Daniel more than he expected.

This was the man who had taught him to drive.

The man who had navigated across three states using folded paper maps.

The man who seemed to know every road in town.

Now he was apologizing because he couldn’t find a silver sedan in a supermarket parking lot.

Daniel finally said, “I shouldn’t have yelled.”

Arthur shrugged.

“You were worried.”

“That doesn’t make it okay.”

His father looked at him.

For a moment, neither spoke.

Then Arthur smiled faintly.

“You were always stubborn.”

Daniel laughed despite himself.

“You’re calling me stubborn?”

“I have witnesses.”

“Mom doesn’t count.”

At the mention of Daniel’s mother, something changed in Arthur’s face.

Eleanor had been gone four years.

Cancer had taken her quickly.

Arthur had never quite adjusted to the silence that followed.

Daniel suddenly wondered how many changes his father had been hiding since then.

“How often does this happen?” he asked.

Arthur looked away.

“Dad.”

“A few times.”

Daniel’s stomach tightened.

“What does ‘a few’ mean?”

Arthur didn’t answer.

“Have you gotten lost before?”

“Not exactly.”

“Then what?”

Arthur rubbed his thumb across his palm.

It was an old nervous habit.

“Sometimes I walk into a room and don’t know why I’m there.”

Daniel said nothing.

“Sometimes I wake up and, for a second, I think your mother is still beside me.”

Arthur swallowed.

“And last week…”

He stopped.

“What happened last week?”

Arthur’s eyes lowered.

“I drove to our old house.”

Daniel stared at him.

The Bennett family had moved away from that house twenty-two years earlier.

“Why?”

Arthur’s answer was barely audible.

“I thought you were waiting for me there.”