Just as I reach the edge of the facility’s snow-buried gardens, a police siren cuts through the night. I freeze like a winter hare, but from the sound of it they’re a few blocks away, heading in the other direction.      After a few moments I move forward again, climbing onto the waist-high garden wall for a ten-foot balance-beam crawl to the window. It’s treacherous with ice, but I can’t leave footprints in the snow. The caretakers at the Alzheimer’s facility will notice.

     The garden wall brings me right to the window, and I peer through the frosted glass. Nothing moving inside.

     I’ve been making this same journey for months now, and its sounds and sensations are familiar as my father’s face: the sharp click of the lock, the quick slide of the window, my soundless dance across the shadowed floor. 

     I sit lightly on the bed at the far side of the room, careful not to nudge its sleeping occupant. It’s a woman this time, spidery veins tracing her parchment skin. 

She’s the faded kind of old. The skin on her temples is stretched thin, almost invisible by the time it meets her wispy hairline. She smells ancient, the stale odor of memories starting to mold. 

     The wind batters against the windows suddenly, startling me enough that I jump up and pad back to the window, looking out into the snow-covered lawn. Nothing there, not this late at night in a town like Sugarwood. The sirens have already faded into the night. I return to the bed, fiddling with my bracelet nervously.

     Carefully, carefully, I trace my fingertips across one of the old woman’s veiny hands. She stirs in her sleep, and I pause, waiting. Once she settles, I slowly pick up the hand, holding it in both of my own. 

Before I begin, I take a moment to look, really look, at the woman on the bed. Despite her age, wrinkles set inside wrinkles, I can see she was beautiful once. Still is, in truth. High cheekbones, full lips, a balanced, open face. More laugh lines at the creases of her eyes than frown lines between her brows. 

     This moment always flutters across my heart like a trapped sparrow. Every time, for just a moment, I let myself remember that this is a real person. 

     Shaking my head, I focus on the task at hand. 

     I begin to hum. The song is different for every Canto, and it took me a long time to find mine, to pluck out the notes and melodies swimming through my blood. Its minor key and lilting, wistful tone are vaguely Irish. A song of sorrow, of pain and loss and power. 

     As the song buzzes out of my closed lips, I feel the familiar pull between my hands and the old woman’s. With every note, I steal more of her memories, along with the time stored within them. The melody gently tugs the days from her, guiding them to me, and I experience a jumble of memory and emotion and life so rich I almost stumble in my song. 

     The woman winces slightly as I siphon out her past, but she remains asleep. 

      I’m only taking the life you’ve already lived, I think to her, still humming. The life you’ve already started to forget.

     I finish my song on one last, haunting note. Closing my eyes, I try to sort out the flashes of sunlit days and snatches of laughter her memories gave me. 

     “You can’t blame me for that,” I whisper, gently placing her hand back on the bed. “You’ve already lived this time, and it’s only fair for you to give it to someone else. Someone who needs it.”

     As I slowly walk to the window, glancing back at the woman lying asleep on the bed, I feel the sudden urge to apologize. The weight of her second-hand life threatens to drag me down through the floor.

     “I’m sorry,” I whisper, stealing into the night.

     My home is only a ten-minute walk from the care center, but the night air is cold and biting. I hurry along, pulling my coat up around my cheeks. The wind whips my long mahogany hair into my eyes, and the strands sting my frozen face. 

     When I’m only a few streets away from home, another siren suddenly pierces the night. I look back in surprise, but I can’t see the glow of lights in either direction, and the sound is faint. The source of the siren must be a few streets over. 

     Another siren joins the keening, faint at first but louder and louder every second. A cop car speeds around the corner of the street, blazing past me at top speed. 

     Strange. Sugarwood is a small town, and the local officers know better than to drive through a quiet street with sirens blaring at this time of night. Hopefully no one got into an accident on the icy nighttime roads.

     I scan the street for a face in the window, but no one’s peering out into the winter night.  I turn away from the sound, my pace brisker. 

     A few minutes later, the darkened stoop welcomes me home. A rotted jack-o-lantern smiles up at me in a half-shriveled grin, even though it’s already December. 

     The Johnson’s Christmas lights are already up next door, and gaudy Christmas decorations sprinkle the street, but we won’t be decorating this year. Thanksgiving already came and went, and my holiday feast was a lonely TV dinner.

     Hanging my keys and coat on the metal hook by the door, I click the light on. Our familiar, cramped home springs out of the darkness. It’s tidy, just like Mom kept it when she was alive. My father’s art supplies and easel in the corner are the only splash of disarray. I can’t bring myself to pack them up. 

     I rub my bleary eyes with my knuckles, trying to push away the tiredness. It’s three in the morning and I have school in a few hours, but I can’t sleep yet. I head toward the room at the end of the hall, past the faded photographs of grinning faces and the canvases aflame with color.

     His room is dark as I enter, the only light coming from the now-open doorway. He lies on the bed, still as death, and I can’t help but think of the woman I just visited. This room has the same stale air as the Alzheimer’s facility. 

     The nightstand is covered with pill bottles and medical detritus. Death hovers above my father, trapped in the cobwebs at the corners of the ceiling and spread across his comforter. Sudden panic grips my chest. Maybe he’s gone. Maybe this time I’m too late.

     “Dad?” I breathe, approaching the bed. No response, but I relax when I see his chest rising and falling slightly. 

     I perch myself on the bed, and again feel the echo of the night’s earlier visit. The same sense of sitting next to someone as they fade away. 

     Carefully, I pick up my father’s hand.

     His eyes open, and I drop his hand in surprise. He blinks a few times and then squints up at me, though I know I must be just a silhouette to him, a shadow against the light seeping in from the doorway. 

     “Ambrosia.” He always calls me by my full name, instead of Rosie.

     “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you,” I whisper.

     “Is my water bottle…” He sits up and tries to reach over to the nightstand.

     “I’ll get it,” I say hurriedly, “Lie back down.” I grab the bottle from the bottom shelf, passing it to him. He closes his eyes as he drinks. I hold the bottle for him so he doesn’t drop it on himself.

Dad’s hair is still dark and full like mine, but his skin is pale, and the circles under his eyes are so thick they look painted on with one of his brushes. The broad shoulders I sat on as a little girl look fragile and diminished peeking out of the bedcovers.

     “It’s late,” he finally says. His voice has a new raspiness to it I don’t like. “Where have you been?”

     “I had an errand to run,” I say, pushing his hair back from his forehead. 

     He winces in response to my words, not fooled at all, and it stings like a tetanus shot. I was hoping he’d stay asleep for this. The last thing I need right now is for Dad to be disappointed in me.

     “I told you not to do this, Ambrosia,” he pleads, pulling his hand away weakly as I try to pick it up again. “I don’t want this.”

     “I’m not going to let you die,” I answer firmly, grabbing his hand and clutching it tightly. “Not if I can save you.”

     “I don’t want you to save me. I gave up everything to protect you from this.”

     Ignoring him, I close my eyes and begin to hum. This time, however, it isn’t my song I’m humming. 

My father’s song is a more cheerful melody than mine, an artist’s mix of passion and color and the delight of beautiful things. It doesn’t fit the way I feel, and I long for my own song to capture my sadness. 

     As I hum, I feel the memories, the time, seeping through my fingers into his. The transfer of time is unlike any other feeling I’ve ever experienced, a strange tug that yanks at the invisible layers between my skin and my soul. With each note, more of the old woman’s life transfers to Dad.

     Suddenly, I find myself standing at the bank of a river, the sun on my face and a roguish breeze dancing through my hair. Trees dot the riverbank, their gnarled roots growing into the water as though stealing a drink. The trees’ leaves shift in the sunlight, casting patterns of dancing light and shadow on the river’s surface. A bird calls out nearby, its song clear and rich.

     The scene is a tiny sip of contentment. In the few seconds I’m there in the woman’s past, I yearn to stay on that riverbank forever.

     I snap back to the present as quickly as I strayed from it, disoriented. Claudia taught me how to capture time without having to relive any of the moments I steal, but sometimes snatches slip through. 

     I refocus on my father just in time to feel him yank his hand away from mine. He’s studying me, his dark eyes big and sad. 

     I turn away, unable to hold his gaze. 

     However, the circles under his eyes aren’t nearly as dark as before, and he pulled his hand away with more force than he’s been able to muster for weeks. This woman’s time is more potent than most. None of the previous memories made him stronger, they just kept him alive. I’ll have to ask Aunt Claudia about it.

     When he speaks, his voice has lost that new roughness. “That’s enough.”

     We stare at each other for a moment, silent. My father knows me better than anyone else in the world, but I don’t think he recognizes the girl he’s looking at. 

     I don’t care. For the first time in weeks, I do recognize him. He’s my father again, instead of some fading wraith, sick and needy.

     I’m the one who breaks the tension. “I love you, Dad,” I say. “I won’t lose you.”

     “You have no idea how much I love you back,” he responds, his eyes softening. “But you can’t save me from dying, love. We’re just prolonging the inevitable.”

     “Yes, we are,” I answer, fighting back the tears I refuse to cry in front of him. “Prolonging it until they find a cure. Prolonging it until this disease gets so tired of trying that it leaves us alone. Don’t ask me not to do this, Dad.”

     He reaches for my hand again, and this time he’s the one to clutch mine tightly. “I was raised to be a hummer, Ambrosia. I know exactly how tempting it can be to help someone you love. But I also know what it costs.”

     “I know what I’m doing.”

     He shakes his head in frustration, but that just strengthens my conviction. Two minutes ago, he couldn’t even lift his head, let alone shake it with such energy.

     “Just go to sleep,” he says. “You look exhausted, and you have school tomorrow.”

     I gently pull my hand out of his tight grasp. 

     I can take his disappointment after all, as long as I don’t lose him.

     I creep back to my room, switching off the living room light, and slip into bed with my jeans still on. All around me, sprawled across the walls, are murals my father painted when I was a little girl. A waterfall from Venezuela, pyramids from Egypt, onion domes from Russia, glimpses of people and places from around the globe. A map of the world in pictures. 

     I cry silently so he doesn’t hear, a slow trickle of tears at first that quickly dissolves into silent, shuddering sobs. He promised to take me somewhere after graduation. One of these places I grew up dreaming about. He promised to be there with me.

     I fall asleep crying, lying on top of the covers. 

     When my alarm goes off at six, however, I am tucked lovingly into bed, and there is a note on my nightstand. I love you, Ambrosia, it reads.

     My tired eyes want to cry again, but I won’t let them. 

     It’s the first time my father has been out of bed in weeks.