</p><p>LATHROP, Mo. - Dorothy, not long awake, her morning hair geometric, stands alone at the kitchen island. A jumble of plastic jars and amber medical vials is clustered in front of her like a miniature cityscape.</p><p>"Morning, sweetie," Barney says, walking in from the barn. "You're up earlier today." He hangs up his coat, moves to the dishwasher, begins putting plates away.</p><p>Staring at her pills through round, oversized glasses, Dorothy barely looks up.</p><p>"Early?" she says. "I guess."</p><p>She fidgets with her vials. Nasonex and Zyrtec for allergies. Wellbutrin for depression. Actonel, osteoporosis. Lipitor, cholesterol. ACTOS, diabetes. Exelon and vitamin E for Alzheimer's.</p><p>This is the routine.</p><p>Two years into a diagnosis of Alzheimer's, Dorothy no longer dwells on why her family has been so susceptible to the world's leading cause of dementia. Only 63, she has it now.</p><p>As a young woman, she watched for nearly 15 years as her mother shriveled in mind and body and died of the disease at age 71. Two of Dorothy's sisters -- like her, round and barely 5 feet tall -- went much faster and younger, one just last February.</p><p>Four and a half million Americans have Alzheimer's. No cure exists. No one knows the exact cause. But as America ages, few people will remain untouched by the disease.</p><p>Barring any medical breakthroughs, the number of cases will double in the next 25 years. Every day people examine their "senior moments." They wonder. They worry.</p><p>The first sign for Dorothy: She began forgetting items at the grocery store. She knew her family history. A doctor compared old and new head X-rays. Your brain is shrinking, he said.</p><p>So together she and Barney talked to the doctors, traveled to leading experts in St. Louis, to a support group. There they learned more about what they would face: how the loveliness of their life together would be tested. How, in time, everything about Dorothy -- her sweet devotion, her everyday optimism -- would wither.</p><p>Now the Gowins reach out for normalcy -- loving each other deeply, yet waltzing uneasily as they struggle toward one goal: to have good days, one at a time, knowing there will be fewer than they ever expected. Hoping today will be one of them.</p><p>It is a crisp Sunday morning, nearly 8:30.</p><p>Barney leans his face toward his wife's.</p><p>"Kiss?" he asks.</p><p>She turns, gives him a perfunctory peck, turns away.</p><p>A Kansas City homicide cop for 30 years -- easy, positive, scraggily bearded for his country retirement -- Barney already senses Dorothy's edginess.</p><p>"Have you had breakfast? Would you like coffee?" Barney asks.</p><p>He has been thinking about the day. Soon they'll get ready for church in Lawson. They can have lunch in town. Maybe take in a movie. Make a nice day. Make Dorothy happy.</p><p>"I'll make some coffee," Barney says.</p><p>Time was, not much more than a year before, when Dorothy would have greeted Barney's offer with a bright smile. Always, she was kind, giving, patient. "Mr. and Mrs. Congeniality," their children called them. Best friends.</p><p>At the island now, Dorothy picks up a pen. Carefully she jots down her breakfast in the spiral journal she uses to keep track of her doses, meals and blood sugar for diabetes.</p><p>"I already ate," she mutters to Barney.</p><p>She puts down her notebook amid scraps of paper, a pile of notes she began writing to Barney as the disease took hold. She wants desperately for Barney to read them, to act. To her misery, she believes he never will.</p><p>You are the reason for all our problems as you are an abusive and self-centered brute.