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From the New York Times and WBUR Boston, this is Modern Love.

Stories of Love, Laws, and Redemption.

I'm your host, Megna Chakrabardi.

When someone has Alzheimer's, it can feel like the person they are and the person that their family knows and loves has vanished.

But sometimes, deep into the disease, other parts of them appear.

That's what Dini Hartzog-Mislock writes about in this week's essay, Katrina Balfe of the Star's Show Outlander reads Dini's piece, a boyfriend too good to be true.

Eight years ago, my mother received an unusual call from her mother.

Have you got a minute? My grandmother asked.

She then claimed that my 60-year-old aunt, my mother's sister, was seeing someone.

My mother was incredulous.

Unless she's sneaking out of the window at night, she said, I'm not sure how she's going on these dates. She's living with me and Ricky.

My aunt had undergone double-hip replacement surgery and was recuperating under the care of my parents.

My grandmother continued, well, this new gentleman actually has been in love with your sister since kindergarten.

He's just been waiting for Ronnie to get out of the picture.

Ronnie had been my aunt's husband for 40 years, and he had recently left her, but not in the way that anyone had expected.

Let me back up.

The last few decades had not been kind to my aunt.

She had wrestled with ending her long marriage to Ronnie, who was a troubled soul.

He wasn't a bad person, but he struggled with addiction, a condition that can mold you with sticky hands into someone else.

With the news of her impending surgery, my aunt knew he would be unable to care for her, so after much consideration,

she promised to find him a new home, gathered up her courage and left.

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