He’s just trying to be helpful, but it grates like sandpaper. Like I’m not already doing everything I can to keep Mom alive. Like I need his help, and if he hadn’t sent a stupid little link, I might have floundered and Mom might have died. Like he actually cares if she does. All hail ex-dad, the hero.
Ugh. I know he didn’t really mean it that way, but did he really think 2am was the time to text me about it? I click on the screen and start typing. I want to tell him off, let him know he’s out of line and it’s not his place to help us anymore, but I type:Thanks. I’ll look into it.
My thumb hovers over send, but instead hits the backspace and erases the message. If I engage withhim, he’s just going to want to engage more, and I’m too exhausted.
“Promise me something?” Mom startles me out of my rumination.
I put down my phone and scoot my chair closer to her bed. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“You didn’t.” She smiles and rolls on her side so she’s facing me. Her voice is scratchy, and each breath rattles, making it hard to hear her. “I’ve been thinking about the power of attorney.”
“Mom—”
“I’m going to do the paperwork. You won’t have to worry about anything. But… if I don’t make it, promise—” She cuts off coughing so hard the bed shakes, and she can’t recover her breath.
I get her water and help her sit up so she can drink. My heart pinches in my chest. I hate seeing her like this, fragile and weak. I want her the way she always was, carefree, energetic, sarcastic.
“I’m not throwing your ashes on Ryan Gosling, Mom. I don’t care how much you want to meet him.”
She doesn’t smile, but she stops drinking, and the corner of her lip twitches. She’s the only one who thinks I’m funny. I wish I could hear her laugh now. Really laugh.
“I’m not stuffing you and keeping you on the couch in my apartment, either,” I add, wanting to hear her laugh again.
“You don’t have an apartment,” she deadpans.
It’s true. I moved back into Mom’s house whenshe was diagnosed, partly to help and partly because I had nowhere else to go.
“Why do I need an apartment when I’ve got all this?” I wave my arm at the sterile hospital room. Beige floor. Beige walls. Beige blanket on the bed. It’s a study in poorly executed minimalism. “Plus all the free hot chocolate I want.”
“And eye candy, too.” Her smile is still weak, but there’s a lightness to her voice.
I roll my eyes. “I’m not looking.”
“Don’t lie to your mother.” She barely makes it through the words before another coughing fit overtakes her and the conversation stops so she can take another drink. When she’s had enough, she leans back against the pillows and closes her eyes with a soft smile.
The room is so silent I can hear the second hand on the clock tick, tick, ticking away. Part of me wants to ask what she wanted me to promise, but a larger part of me doesn’t. If I don’t promise her anything, maybe she won’t go. Maybe she’ll hold out longer. I know it’s not logical, but grief doesn’t follow rules. So, I stay quiet and listen to the clock.
Just when I think she’s fallen asleep, she clears her throat. “Don’t close yourself off from people who want to love you, Hazelnut.”
I swallow. “What do you mean?”
“Talk to your dad.”
The words pull at my anger like a tight rubber band. Jeremy doesn’t want to love me. He spent my entire childhood trying to change me, to make me intosomeone who wasn’t an embarrassment. He doesn’t deserve my time. Not after what he did to Mom.
She says she forgives him, but that doesn’t mean I have to. On the first day we were in the hospital, I took her phone because mine was dead and I needed to text Kiara. I didn’t mean to see the text from Jeremy, but it was right there on her lock screen. Apparently, she told him she was in the hospital, and all he had the nerve to write back was,‘Get well soon and give Nutter a hug for me.’
Seriously? The woman he was married to for almost two decades could die, and he sends the same message you’d find on a generic Hallmark card?
The rubber band inside me pulls tighter and tighter until I snap. “Why?”
“Because he’s the only family you have left.”
I stare at her, blinking. Numb. A physical slap would hurt less. She doesn’t have to remind me I’m alone. No one knows that better than I do.
“He loves you,” she says, so soft it makes my heart hurt.
Okay, fine, he loves me. In a generic Hallmark card way. The same way someone loves their great-aunt or their cat. He doesn’t want anything to happen to me. He’d send a card if I was in the hospital. He’d probably lend me money if I was at risk of being homeless—which might be a legitimate problem once we get out of the hospital, since the bills are piling up. But Jeremy doesn’t understand me at all. The me that he loves isn’t really me. It’s the sugarcoated version of me I let him see. It’s the me that mastered in trying toimpress him, only to be blindsided by his complete disregard for the love Mom and I offered.
