I figured maybe she confused me with another customer because those toll service places deal with thousands of people a day. Plus she kept glancing between me and the screen like she already regretted saying anything.
But the drive home bothered me.
Mostly because I realized I hadn’t actually driven to Cleveland in a long time.
Not personally.
I used to make that drive twice a month to help my older sister after her hip surgery. Same rest stops. Same awful construction near Sandusky every summer. But when I tried remembering the last trip clearly, everything after Christmas felt blurry and mashed together.
That night I asked my grandson if he remembered helping me replace the EZ Pass battery.
He looked confused and said, “Grandpa, Mom handles all your driving stuff now.”
I said since when.
He shrugged and kept eating cereal right out of the box like the question wasn’t strange.
“Since your episodes got worse probably.”
Episodes.
Nobody likes saying complete sentences around me lately.
The next morning I went out to my Buick before anybody else woke up because I wanted to prove everybody was overreacting. The car started fine except the seat was pushed way forward and country music blasted immediately at a volume I’d never use.
There were fast food receipts shoved in the console from towns I hadn’t been to in years.
One from Cleveland dated three days earlier.
I checked the mileage notebook I keep in the glove compartment because I write everything down. Oil changes. Tire rotations. Gas fill-ups.
Half the handwriting inside wasn’t mine anymore.
Or maybe it was mine.
Just shakier.
Same block letters. Same little habit of crossing the number 7 with a line through it.
One page near the back had a note written beside an address in Cleveland:
“If Karen asks, tell her appointment got moved again.”
I still didn’t know a Karen.
But folded behind that page was a yellow visitor badge from a memory care facility with my name printed under:
FAMILY OF RESIDENT.