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be washed. Behind her, the window’s open, the flat desert stretching to the ridge, and Mom, profiled against the twilight, seems small. The desert could swallow her up. I catch the weariness in her eyes before she blinks it away.

We’re quiet, except for the sounds of clinking utensils.
    “Eat your soup,” Dad tells Serge. “It’s good.”
    Serge folds his arms. “No.” The sight of my grandfather, pouting like a toddler — I don’t know whether to giggle or cry.
    “Come on. You’ve got to eat. You’ll be hungry,” Dad insists.
    After a moment, Serge takes his spoon and scoops it into the bowl. His hand trembles — the only movement in the room — and we watch him spill each spoonful he tries to lift.
    “Papá,”
Dad says, and I cringe at the awkwardness of this moment, of the child feeding the parent. “Let me —” Dad reaches for the spoon, but Serge shoves the bowl with all his might. The soup splashes down the table in a tidal wave, soaking Mom’s lap.
    “Uh-oh!” Lu crows — one of his favorite phrases — and repeats it over and over, banging his spoon on the high chair as percussion.
    “Hey!” Dad shouts at Serge and slams his napkin down on the table. “Watch what you’re doing!”
    “It’s my house! My house!”
    “It’s okay.” Mom wets a dishcloth and mops up the spilled soup. “Accidents happen.”
    No one calls her on the lie that hangs there. That was no accident. It’s right in the Seville pamphlet, the warning of aggressive and possibly violent behaviors,
as your loved one attempts to navigate through their new and frightening reality
.
    Dad takes a calming breath, then changes the subject. “
Papá
, we drove past the Seville on our way down. They’re getting the grounds ready for summer.”
Discuss upcoming changes with a positive outlook
.
    “Seville?” Serge twists his wrinkles into a confused face.
    “Remember?” Dad says. “The Seville? The new home I — we — found for you?”
    Serge reacts to the news with as much enthusiasm as Alta would give a sheep. “I’m staying here.”
    Dad shreds his napkin into bits. “We decided this was the right choice.”
    “No. You decided,” Serge says, and he’s right. Earlier this year, when Dad first learned that his dad was sick, Serge wouldn’t agree to move away from the ranch. Doctors told him he needed to be somewhere safer, somewhere closer to a hospital, but they couldn’t convince him. “He won’t even discuss it,” Dad had told my mom while tugging his hair in frustration. “He just keeps shouting, ‘This is where my roots are!’ ”
    “So what does that mean?” Mom had wondered.
    Dad had sighed. “It means I have to hire a lawyer.” And he did. He hired a lawyer to make Serge move —
for his own good
, Dad kept on saying.
    “I’m not going to some raisin ranch,” Serge says now. “You can’t make me.”
    “Papá.”
Dad groans, and I see a flash of what he must have been like as a teenager, with a flawlessly executed roll of the eyes. “It’s not a raisin ranch, it’s . . . it’s a private residence. Practically a hotel.”
    “Too expensive,” Serge says.
    “It’s not, remember? We looked at the numbers? It’s completely doable,” Dad says. “There’s round-the-clock medical staff, jetted tubs, a four-star chef. It’s the best place in New Mexico.” Dad’s guilt is bright as a sunburn. Serge would never care about Jacuzzi tubs or gourmet food; Dad picked the swanky Seville to feel better about putting his dad away against his will.
    “Then move in yourself.” The oxygen shoots through Serge’s tube and squeaks with rage.
    “The ranch is too far for hospice to drive. You need hands-on care. The dementia is just going to get worse.”
    “I’m not leaving the ranch, Raúl,” Serge says. “Not when the bees are coming.”
    “Beeee, beeee,” Lu chants.
    My heart pulses. Bees.
    Dad rubs his temples. “What are you talking about? Bees,
Papá
?”
    “
Sí, sí
, the