He held himself straighter than his failing body wanted to, kept his voice level, dressed each morning as though for an occasion, and I understood after a while that the formality I had first taken for coldness was in fact a kind of armor, the last dignity of a man determined not to let his children see how much their circling hurt him.

Arthur bore it with a stony dignity that cost him something I could see.

And perhaps because I was the one person in that house who wanted nothing from him, who was only there to lift his sister and change her linens and warm her soup, he began, in small ways, to notice me.

One evening he watched me set down a cup with hands that would not stop trembling, and he asked, quietly, why my hands shook every time the telephone rang and the hospital’s name came up on the little screen.

Chapter 4 — The Truth