Shortly before Steve’s 37th birthday, the forgetting started.


First small things—keys, dates, directions. Then bigger things—names, familiar roads, entire days swallowed like they’d never happened.


Doctors spoke in careful tones. Words like degenerative and rapid and prepare. But Steve would smile at Roberta as if love alone could anchor him to the world.


Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn’t.


One night, after tucking the kids into bed, Roberta sat beside him on their porch. The air smelled like summer rain had paused just beyond the horizon.


He looked at her with that familiar softness, and she knew tomorrow he’d wake up not quite knowing why he loved her, only that he did.


She leaned in, resting her forehead against his.

And she kissed him goodbye knowing tomorrow he wouldn’t remember her.