“Sometimes I can feel every second lost. Every second that I could be working to make a difference. To bring her back,” he says.
“Dad, don’t do this to yourself.”
“Grace, don’t worry too much about me.”
I shake my head. “How long are you going to be able to keep this up? How many more years can you work like this?”
“As long as it takes,” he says.
The anger rising as bile at his fantasy world scorches my face. I stand and begin to pace.
“Grace—”
I hold up my hand. “She could be dead, Dad. How many more years are you going to live like she’s still out there?”
Dad sits up a little straighter and swings his legs off the couch. He leans forward. “I know these last few years have been hard on you with all the moving around, but you can’t give up hope. If they find her, they’ll put her in the system. They’ll notify us. It’s just a matter of time.”
The months have turned to years and the years have collected over a decade. The more time that passes, the more I know she will never be found.
“Dad, I’ve washed your coffee mug more times than I’ve seen you.” I add under my breath, “It’s not fair.”
Dad stands up and holds out his hands to me, pleading, “I’m sorry, Grace. It’s not fair. I know I’m not around as much as I should be. But we are so close to getting a handle on this disease.”
I cross my arms. “You’ve said that every time they find a new marker gene. Every time they have a new drug that’s supposed to be the miracle cure. Every time you have a lead on a new and even better doctor.”
“What would you have me do then? Give up on her? On us as a family?”
“When have we been a family? It has been over a decade. Do you realize that?”
Dad shakes his head. “We have to keep trying.”
I snort, “What happened to living instead of waiting for the next trial or the next discovery?”
“I can’t just pretend she’s dead, Grace. If there is even a minute chance she is alive . . .”
I throw up my hands, unable to contain my frustration. “Stop it, Dad! This isn’t some ridiculous fairy tale. This is life. There is no cure and she isn’t coming back.”
Heavy lines of anger harden around Dad’s mouth. He walks over to the woodstove and places his hands on the mantel, gazing up at the photo. He stares up at the two of them, so much in love when they first met all those years ago. He has worshipped here in front of this photo so many times that the rug beneath it has grown prematurely threadbare. Except I know that he doesn’t believe in a god. He believes in science. He believes in the idea that humans can unlock the infinite capacities of our minds.
Dad turns and faces me, his voice firm and uncompromising, the way I have heard him speak when he is lobbying for more money to entice another doctor. “We don’t know that, Grace. What the future holds. Not one of us can know that.”
I want to scream that we do know. I know. And I would rather tear the flesh from my body before living that way. Before I say things that I will regret, I press my lips together and study the pattern on the rug.
“Gracie, I don’t know what to tell you. I can’t, I just can’t let her go. If I didn’t do everything in my power, how could I live with myself?” Dad steps forward with tears in his eyes. “Please, bugaboo, please. Your mother, she is my fairy tale. When we had you, that was my dream. She is with me every day, even if I can’t touch her. Working on the next treatment, finding out as much as possible about the disease, it’s the only way I know to bring her back. I’m doing this for us. For you.”
I slump into myself. I know all this. Know that he will never stop until there is a cure or he dies trying. The one thing my father harbored in all his years in foster care was the insane belief that there could be a love to transcend all boundaries, all limits. He found that with my mother, and he has never let go.
So I tell him. “Dr. Mendelson believes they found a universal marker. SIC-5 affects the risk of a cluster of genes.”
Dad freezes. “Is she sure?”
“She called it the Rosetta Stone.”
“They are going to develop a test like Huntington’s,” he says quietly.
I stay silent.
I don’t agree with Dad about the need to know. Why would anyone want to test for a gene like Huntington’s disease just so they can look forward to their balance slowly eroding, followed by jerking limbs and deep depression, until finally they sink into madness and die prematurely? What is the point in learning how many repetitions are on chromosome four? So you can live out the rest of your life like one long bucket list? My only reason for knowing would be so that I could end it before it happened. So many years have passed since the discovery of the Huntington’s gene, and still, there is no cure.
“It’s the first step,” Dad says as though reading my mind.
“First step to what?” I protest. “To killing yourself because you know you’re just going to go crazy or wander the streets homeless or sit drooling in a hospital? All the wonderful amazing choices you have once you know you are fucked for life.”
The clattering of train tracks rings for a moment and I turn my head toward the window.
Dad stares at me, shaking his head. “Grace, that’s not true.”
“Love doesn’t conquer everything. It’s all a stupid story.”
“Don’t say that, Grace.”
“YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND!” I shout. “All this wasted time. Who’s the crazy one for believing any of
