Excerpt from Issue 309 (Autumn 2026)
"Sundown" by Emma Gammans
Content note: contains depictions of cognitive decline.
Carol is nine when she finally learns how to ride a bike. It’s not as though she hasn’t tried. She has. Many times. But she’s a panicky kid, always fraught with worry. Her classmates call her a spaz, and though she doesn’t know the exact meaning of this word, she knows it’s an insult. And she knows she isn’t like other kids. She’s more calculated in her decisions. By nine, Carol is not only afraid of the bike; she’s also embarrassed that riding has taken her so long to learn.
“We just need to practise,” says her father. “I know you can do it, Bug.” Carol’s father makes a point of cheerleading since her mother died in a car crash. Carol was in the back seat when it happened, but she was only a baby and has no recollection of the incident. Only as an adult will Carol learn that she’s likely suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder for the better part of her life, but this, now, is the seventies, and Carol ought to toughen up.
She pleads with her father. It’s important to him that she have a normal childhood, and bike riding, he maintains, is one piece of that pie.
Then, he says, trying to sweeten the pot, “If you give riding a real shot, we can get that puppy you want. Deal?” She adds one clause.
“We practise after the sun’s gone down,” she says. “So no one sees.” For the next month, Carol and her father visit the LeBoldus Catholic High School’s football field at sunset. They sit together on the bleachers and watch the great Saskatchewan sky unfold. Carol asks how the clouds can be pink and red and orange, and her father teaches her, with great pleasure, about the world’s mysteries: the electromagnetic spectrum and short versus long wavelengths.
At sundown, they begin practice. Despite her protests, Carol’s father drives the old station wagon onto the field, flips on the high beams, and floods the grass with light. There’s a natural order to some things, he explains, such as the relationship between a father and his daughter. A father may overrule his daughter, he asserts, especially when it comes to matters of safety. She wonders if the same applies in reverse should her father ever find himself in jeopardy. He holds the edge of her seat and places his spare hand on her back.
“Deep breaths,” he says, and Carol feels the bike wobble as she lifts her feet onto the pedals. “One, two, three!” Her father’s running now, propelling her forward, and yet her long lanky legs are stiffer than ever.
“Pedal, pedal!” cries her father. She presses one foot, then the other. “Harder, harder!” And now, suddenly, she feels herself gaining speed. She’s got it, she thinks. She’s flying. Her father lets go of the seat, keeps his hand on her back another few paces, then let’s go. She’s on her own. She can still hear her father in the distance.
“Keep pedalling!” Then it occurs to her that she doesn’t know how to stop, and so she throws her legs out to each side and zigzags a few feet before toppling over. There are grass stains on her jeans, and her eyes well with tears.
“How could you leave me like that?” she asks. She’s sobbing now.
“I won’t be around forever,” he says. Later she’ll tell him he was too candid in this moment, but for now she pushes him away and kicks the bike. Her shadow fades as she stomps out of the light and into darkness.
*
Carol pours herself a glass of wine as she cooks. For longevity’s sake, she justifies. The kitchen is awash with the day’s remaining light. It glints, catching the rims of her readers, folded near a stack of library books at the end of the island. By six o’clock, she waits for darkness and watches as billows of fiery clouds drown under the weight of a dark blue sky. She waits, too, for her father’s nightly pacing. Sometimes it begins in the late afternoon. On good days, he might make it through dinner. But always, the confusion and restlessness descend as surely as the setting sun. It’s been nearly one year since Carol’s father moved in, and yet, still, she finds herself searching for the man who raised her, who taught her to skip stones and to recognize north from south. But it’s no use; looking for him is like grasping for dust in a sandstorm. He’s everywhere, yet nowhere to be found.
Carol had only just embraced life as an empty nester when her father’s dementia took a turn. It had been nearly three years since her divorce and two years since her son, Aiden, moved across the country to study sociology. She tried coaxing him in another direction, suggesting the importance of practicality, but he argued that in a world full of people, understanding human behaviour was practical. To her great relief, he later transferred into education, claiming a desire to not only hold knowledge but also share it. By then, the sticky notes in Carol’s father’s home no longer served their intended purpose. Turn off the stove. This month is November. Lock the front door. They were mostly in Carol’s handwriting, though a few newer ones featured her father’s crabbed scrawl. One said Carol is your daughter, and it seemed to glare at Carol from its place on the fridge, “daughter” unfolding letter by letter, each progressively smaller than the last, as if to mirror her father’s receding memory. If she’d wanted, she could have disappeared into the fading vistas of a bygone life, avoiding the first of two inevitable deaths, but there was no world in which she could have lived with herself, allowing her father to fade away into the shadows of some steely care home. No. She would care for him. Whatever it took. And this, she knew, was not for the faint of heart; though until he moved in, she could never have predicted her own strength.
Carol’s father shuffles into the kitchen wearing a pair of slippers and an oversized flannel.
“I’ve got to get home,” he says. He stresses the word “home.” Carol places her wine glass on the windowsill.
“Let’s have a drink, shall we, Dad?” She pours him a glass of water and adds a lemon wedge to the rim. She hands it to him, then guides him into the living room and turns on a playlist: “Calming Classical.” She has researched every corner of the internet and now considers herself an expert in managing her father’s sundowning symptoms. Still, she is tired, and some nights she feels as though her own mind is beginning to wilt, her reality slowly warping to encompass her father’s. She will never forget the first time he forgot about the car crash, inquiring after Carol’s mother as though she had popped out to the supermarket. By then, his symptoms had begun to fluctuate between moments of clarity, offering Carol a glimpse into their futures and injecting her with unshakeable fear.
Tonight they sit together on the couch until the sky grows dark, the last hues of orange streaming across the shag carpet Carol has not had time to vacuum. She feels the world around her unravelling. Whatever illusions had once suggested that she could preserve some shred of normalcy are now gone. None of her attempts to manage the situation have had any influence, and she feels like a child again, powerless. She rubs her father’s arm. His limbs have grown frail, branchlike under the loose fabric of his shirt. He’s lost more weight, and she makes a mental note to cook higher-calorie meals. All her life she has known her father to have an insatiable appetite, and yet now he stares at his plate with a look of apathy.
“How are you feeling, Dad?”
He places his head on her shoulder, lulled by a gentle symphony.
— Emma Gammans studied creative writing at the universities of Victoria and Calgary. Her work has appeared in Prairie Fire and FreeFall Magazine, among other publications. She lives in Ottawa, where she is currently working on a collection of short fiction.
You can read the entirety of Emma Gammans' "Sundown" in Issue 309 Autumn 2026 now!
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