It was brief this time, but Amarissa could still see it. If she hadn't known that he had been slipping in and out, and was being bombarded with memories of his past, maybe she wouldn't have seen it at all. Maybe they were starting to become weaker? Maybe they were almost done? She knew that it was just her hopeful thinking. There was no way of really telling. It was just as likely that he was just getting better at disguising what was happening.
"Oh," Amarissa said, almost surprised by the question. It wasn't that it was difficult for her to talk about anymore. It had been over fifteen years after all. She just wasn't used to having to talk about it. Most of the people she knew had always been aware of what had happened to her father, and refrained from asking her questions about him. "He got sick while he was traveling for a business trip. By the time they got him to a Healer," Amarissa shrugged slightly, and then slid her hand away from her glass and pressed it against the counter top. "It was too late. They couldn't do anything for him. I only really remember bits and pieces of it."
She had been ten, after all. It was undoubtedly one of her clearest members from childhood, but time had still made some of the memories unclear and convoluted. There were things she had insisted she had done or said, people that she remembered, that Gabriel had said had never happened or never been there. She did remember being with him for most of the time, though. He had come back from school early, and she had been practically inseparable from him while their mother and he dealt with everything.
"Why don't we go up to bed?" Amarissa finally managed to suggest. She managed something of a smile, trying to make it feel as though it were just any other night, but she was fairly certain that her tone was a bit off. "You can bring the bottle with you." she said teasingly, but in truth, it was more because she wasn't entirely certain she'd be able to separate him from it and didn't really want to try.