Eli’s fingers skim over my palm, and I slot my hand with his.
Mom fixes her gaze on Eli’s uncle, who seems momentarily speechless. “You’re cruel and emotionally abusive to your nephew. I probably have more I could say to you than to his parents, since you’re the one who sees him every day, but I don’t think you care what I say. I don’t need to know you well to tell you’re a despicable man. The way you’ve spoken to Eli today, or more accurately, barely said a word, is enough to show that. I don’t think telling you off will do anything to change you. But know that if I hear you’ve continued to hurt him as you have been, I’ll pay you a visit and tell you off anyway. Just for me.”
Uncle Remington tries to speak several times, but Mom gets louder with each attempt and says it all, and fixes him with the most terrifying look I’ve ever seen once she finishes. Eli’s hand tightens in mine.
Mom could definitely be a teacher. A scary one. She has Eli’s entire family listening with full, if grudging, attention. She turns to Eli’s parents. “You have a wonderful son, but I don’t think you realize it. You may think providing for him financially is enough. It isn’t. He wants your attention. He needs it.”
“He knows we love him,” Eli’s mother says.
“You got the day wrong for his birthday,” I growl.
Mom shoots a look at me and I clench my jaw to keep from jumping in again. Next to me, Eli is as tense as I’ve ever seen him, his hand fastened to mine like a lifeline.
“Do you tell your son you love him?” Mom asks, barbed wire in her tone. “Some families don’t say it, but they know it all the same, because they do little things that make it clear. You’re not here to show it. So tell me, do you tell him you love him, just because?”
“I . . .”
“I didn’t think so. You have a choice to make,” Mom continues, still in that hardened voice. Some of her anger has slipped beneath the surface. “Maybe you didn’t realize you were hurting your son, but there’s no denying it now, which leaves you with a choice: change your behavior, or pretend this never happened. It’s your decision. Are you going to be the parents he deserves?”
Eli’s father flinches. His mother stares at Mom with an open mouth, and shifts her dewy eyes to Eli. “Sweetheart,” she says in a pleading tone, “you have to understand—”
“Please leave,” Eli says. He isn’t looking at his family, instead burning a hole in the floor.
“Elliot,” Eli’s father says.
“Please,” Eli says again, harsher. His voice is strong, but I hear the strain crackling beneath it, the needle catching on the grooves in the vinyl.
“Don’t have to beg me,” Uncle Remington says. A hot spike of hatred goes through me. I could punch him.
“We’ll be at the house,” Eli’s mother says. “We don’t leave until tomorrow.”
Eli still doesn’t shift his gaze, but gives a terse nod. His family leaves without another word.
“Eli . . .” I start, at least a minute after the sound of the car doors slamming shut has faded.
He looks at me, and then at Mom, and the agony in his face strangles the words in my throat.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
“You have nothing to be sorry—”
Mom pulls him close to her chest, cradling his head. Tears well in his eyes.
“I’msorry,” Mom says in a quiet voice. “I should never have said that in front of you.”
Moisture clings to his dark eyelashes. “You didn’t say anything I didn’t already know.”
“That doesn’t change anything.”
“But it might,” he says. His voice is climbing, pleading, breaking. The perfect stillness of his posture cracks, a tremor visible in his shoulders. “They finally heard—you said what they needed—so they might—”
Mom holds him tighter than she ever has as his voice cuts off and tears run down his cheeks.
“I hope they do,” she says, rubbing circles on his back. “I really hope they do.”
A sob escapes him at that. I see Widget’s tail peeking out from the kitchen and move as silently as I can. He comes out from beneath the kitchen table and crawls onto my lap when I sit on the floor.
It’s not the privacy I should give Eli right now. I can’t bring myself to move farther away. I need to be near enough to rush to him as soon as Mom lets him go, to reassure him myself that he’s loved. This at least gives the illusion of privacy, with a wall between us.
