When you told him Sandra had gotten rid of all the gin, he got into his car and disappeared for twenty minutes, and when he returned he had five bottles, all of which you have hidden, and he told you to call him in a week when you’d run out. A week! You weren’t sure if he was kidding, but you told him it’d be more like a month. Maybe even two. You miss the way Hans used to be, but the old Hans wouldn’t have driven off and returned with all that Bombay Sapphire.

By the way, you have a hiding place in your office—no, not under the desk—and that’s not a hiding place anymore since Sandra knows about it, but there’s another one at the back of the cupboard. There’s a false wall in there. You used those renovation skills of yours to build one when you moved in—it’s where you hide your writing backups. Far easier than moving a desk out of the way every day. Some of the things you’ve written way back in the past, you’d die of embarrassment if anybody ever found them. You could only fit three bottles in there, and the other two you hid in the garage. Sandra didn’t object to the tonic staying in the house.

That’s day seventeen summed up. Let’s give you a good news and bad news summation. Bad news first. You ran out of alcohol. Good news next. You’re restocked with alcohol. More good news—Hans confirmed you never bought a gun. When asked, he said, So the dementia, that means you’re going to start saying all sorts of shit to people, right?

You told him that was so.

I never gave you a gun. I’ ve never given anybody a gun.

Now back to day eleven. Hard to believe that was over a week ago now. In fact, why don’t you go ahead and add that to your I can’t believe it list, F.J., a list that is getting pretty full if you must know. Things are moving quickly now. Not the Big A (though that time bomb is still tick, tick, ticking—actually, strike that, the Big A is a bomb that’s already gone off, and this is the fallout we’re dealing with). You had visited your lawyer during the week, and your accountant—all these preparations for the future—it’s like you’re taking a trip to the moon and never coming back. They each shook your hand at the appointments and said how sorry they were, but they weren’t really sorry. Why would they be? You’re dying and they’re buying new cars and boats and it’s billable hours, baby, billable all the way.

You cooked dinner on day eleven. Eva brought Rick over. You’re actually a pretty good cook. It’s one of your things—and you don’t have many things. You can write, you can play pool, you know some card tricks, you can catch Alzheimer’s like catching a cold, and you can cook. What you cooked that day has slipped your mind, but if you really need to know, then send a letter and address it Jerry Grey, care of the past, and I’ll get back to you.

They showed up, and they were all smiles, and Eva brought her guitar and you all sat in the lounge and she explained how she’s been writing music and, get this, she’s just sold her first song! She said she started writing during her three years in Europe. She traveled with a journal and she’d see things that would inspire her—people, sunsets, landscapes—and she’d write. She never said anything. She said it was something she wanted to do on her own, that if you knew you’d probably try to give her advice, or try to help with her lyrics. The singer who bought her song is planning on recording and releasing it soon. Eva played it, and it was beautiful, but it made the discussion that was coming up so much harder. You sat in the lounge with your arm around Sandra and listened to Eva sing, and Rick sat watching her and he was mesmerized, and you don’t think you’ve ever seen a guy as in love as good ol’ Rick.

The song is called “The Broken Man,” and is about a guy who breaks the hearts of every woman who falls in love with him, until one day his own heart is broken by the woman he can never have because she’s already married. You asked her to play it again, and she did, and Sandra asked for a third time and she said no, maybe later, and smiled as if she were a little embarrassed at how proud you and Sandra were. Sandra took a photograph of you sitting next to Eva with a big smile on your face. (She had the photograph printed the following day, and on the back she wrote Proudest dad in the world. The photo is now on the fridge door.)

Later in the evening came dinner. You and Sandra gave them the news as soon as dinner was over. Eva cried, and Rick put his arm around her and she asked the same question over and over, the How long do you have question that nobody can rightly put their finger on, and you kept thinking, you kept thinking, if Eva’s music is in the world, no matter what happens you’re going to be okay.

Eva cried, and she hugged you to make you feel better, but for her own comfort she turned to Rick. You can’t quite put into words how you felt then. It wasn’t jealousy, but more of a sense of redundancy. You were the person who used to check under her bed for dragons. You were there for her when she thought her world was falling apart after she backed the car into the garage wall. You hugged her until her tears dried up after the cat died. Now you’re the Broken Man, not the broken man of Eva’s song, but broken nonetheless. Eva has Rick now, and she is going to need him. And really, you should be thankful for that.

It was Rick’s idea to bring the wedding forward. Rick, who you didn’t like so much when you first met him because he pulled up in his car with that god-awful hip-hop music playing, which reminds me, J-Man (that’s my hip-hop name for you, and my hip-hop name for the Madness Journal is Maddy J.), reminds me that you hate, absolutely hate hip-hop music and if you’re listening to it in the future with your jeans halfway down your ass then you really are too far gone to be helped. You’re a Springsteen kind of guy. And the Stones. The Doors. You once wrote a whole novel listening to nothing but Pink Floyd. The music you listen to is immortal.

Rick. Rick and his damn hip-hop, blaring from the stereo like he was DJing the whole neighborhood. Eva in the passenger seat making goo-goo eyes at him, and you did good, J-Man, you didn’t tell him to turn it off otherwise you’d get your gun (nonexistent, mind you) and put a bullet into his stereo. He did not make a great first impression, and all you could think was that if this guy married your daughter and they had kids, that’s where your estate was going. Things got better after that—either the hip-hop was a phase, or Eva said something to him, because he kept the music low and started pulling up his jeans, and now—well, now you like him. He’s a good guy. They’ve been living together for the last two years, and now the wedding. Maybe it was Eva’s music that changed him.

Bringing the wedding forward is for you. Hard to walk Eva down the aisle and give her away if you can’t even remember her name. So your daughter, the most amazing girl, is shifting the biggest day of her life so you can enjoy it. It was going to be in a year or so, but now it’s going to be in a few months. A man more suspicious than you might think Rick wants to get a ring on her before your trip to the moon so he gets a cut of what you leave behind. He may as well—in a year’s time you’re not going to care either way.

So there you have it—already your wife and daughter are spending their evenings planning things, sometimes with Rick, sometimes without him, and sometimes Rick will come over and the two of you will watch whatever game is on TV, or play darts in the garage, just shooting the breeze. They’re struggling to find somewhere on short notice for the ceremony but are still hopeful.

Good news—Eva is getting married. You can’t believe how grown up she is now. Walking her down the aisle is going to be one of the proudest days of your life.

Bad news—Sandra mentioned selling the house. She’s trying to be practical. She wants to find somewhere smaller. You’ve added it to the I can’t believe it list. You told her no, that you want to stay here as long as you can. You told her you don’t want to go into a home, that there’s enough money and enough insurance to hire home care. She said okay, and that these things would be reassessed further down the line. You know what further down the line means—it’s going to be just like when she read the journal. She’s going to tell you that you’ve agreed all along to selling the place and that you’ve forgotten.