Marcus came running down behind me. Together we walked Dad inside, wrapped him in a blanket, and made him tea. Dad didn’t seem embarrassed, only puzzled that we were awake. Slowly, the story came out. Our house had been my parents’ house. I grew up in it, and when Dad moved into a senior apartment after Mom died, Marcus and I bought it from him. The first thing I did was repaint that black garage door white.

Mom had chosen that black herself the summer they moved in, and Dad had painted it for her every few years for thirty-one years. A doctor confirmed what I had been too busy to notice. Dad was in the early stages of dementia. On bad nights, his mind slipped back to when Mom was alive, and he walked the two miles here with paint from his storage unit to finish a chore he believed he’d forgotten.