Two days later, Viktor packed his father’s things into three cardboard boxes and a duffle bag.

“I found a care facility,” he said, setting the boxes by the front door like luggage for a trip no one had planned. “There are specialists there. It’s better for everyone.”

I’d looked up the facility. It was adequate—clean, competent, impersonal. The kind of place where people received medication on schedule and died on schedule and the staff rotated frequently enough that no one remembered your name between shifts. It was the kind of place you sent someone when you wanted to say you’d done the right thing without actually doing it.

“He’s coming with me,” I said.Viktor looked up from his phone. “What?”

“Your father. He’s coming with me. He’s not going to that place.”He studied me for a moment—not with anger, not with surprise, but with the mild curiosity of someone watching a decision that didn’t concern him.

“Suit yourself,” he said.