Marcus came running down behind me. Together we walked Dad inside, wrapped him in a blanket, and made him tea. Dad didn’t seem embarrassed, only puzzled that we were awake. Slowly, the story came out. Our house had been my parents’ house. I grew up in it, and when Dad moved into a senior apartment after Mom died, Marcus and I bought it from him. The first thing I did was repaint that black garage door white.

Mom had chosen that black herself the summer they moved in, and Dad had painted it for her every few years for thirty-one years. A doctor confirmed what I had been too busy to notice. Dad was in the early stages of dementia. On bad nights, his mind slipped back to when Mom was alive, and he walked the two miles here with paint from his storage unit to finish a chore he believed he’d forgotten.

Danielle admitted the next day that she had seen an older man near our garage once at dusk and assumed he was a contractor we’d hired. She felt terrible. Then she did something wonderful. She offered to sit with Dad on the evenings I worked late. We also cleared the paint out of his storage unit, just in case. Marcus fixed up the room above the garage, and two months later, Dad moved in with us, where someone could hear him if he woke up confused.

That spring, Dad and I painted the garage door together, in daylight, with Marcus holding the ladder. We painted it black. Mom’s black. Dad took his time with every stroke and said it looked just right. Some nights he still asks where she is, and some mornings he doesn’t remember painting it at all. But every time I pull into the driveway now, that door reminds me who really built this home.