He leaned against the counter and gripped it tightly. “It’s not about your food, Ma. I love your food. It’s about the bills. I just think it would be good to deal with one thing at a time.”
She smiled softly and turned to start a pot of coffee. “I’m not asking for much, mijo. Just a little until I catch up, and a little extra for the cart and the permits. You’ll hardly even notice.”
He flinched because he always noticed. He’d spent a lifetime wondering if today would be the day the lights were shut off or the gas or water disconnected. It didn’t take a therapist to figure out why he lived far below his means and counted every dollar he spent on himself. But he still pulled out his phone. “How much?”
She hesitated. “Three. Maybe four.”
She didn’t mean three or four hundred, but he only hesitated for a beat before he transferred five thousand dollars to her account.
The ping of the confirmation was louder than it should be, and her shoulders loosened instantly. She turned and caught his wrist with both hands, her eyes warm and grateful. “Eres una bendición, mijo. You save me every time.”
He looked down at the hope and relief in her face, and the words slipped out before he could stop them. “I wish you’d let me take care of everything. Not just the bills when they pile up. All of it. You don’t have to keep doing this alone.”
Her grip tightened on his wrist, a flash of pride in her eyes as she stood ramrod straight. She shook her head firmly. “No. I won’t be a burden. I can stand on my own.”
He didn’t tell her that asking him for money every few months wasn’t standing on her own. “You wouldn’t be a burden,” he pressed, his voice rough. “I bought you this house so you wouldn’t have to worry. I can handle the rest. Just let me.”
She released his wrist and grabbed the dish towel from the counter, shaking it out until it waved like a flag. “And then what am I, Evan? An old woman sitting in a house her son pays for, waiting for him to send groceries and money? Waiting for him to come home once a year? No. I need to do this my way. I need to make something of myself.”
His jaw clenched, but he swallowed down the fight in him, leaning down to kiss her cheek instead. “You’re everything already, Ma. You don’t need to prove it.”
Her eyes softened, even as her jaw stayed clenched. “And you don’t need to fix everything. Let me have this, mijo. Let me try.”
Evan nodded, choosing to stay silent as he turned the hot water back on and started washing another dish. He would never tell her that she ruined every holiday when she asked him for money because he knew it was coming and he went anyway.
Evan loved his mother fiercely. There had never been a question about that. In his family, in the neighborhoods he grew up in, children took care of their parents. You worked hard, you made something of yourself, and when you finally had enough, you reached back and carried the people who carried you first. He had grown up with the expectation, and he didn’t resent it. Hell, most of the time, he was grateful he was able to do it. His mother had worked double shifts to earn enough to pay his baseball fees, skipped meals to stretch a dollar, and had to figure out each month which bill to pay. She had sat through rain delays, long bus rides, and years of uncertainty when she was the only one who believed in him.
But somewhere along the way, the line between helping and funding had blurred. He dreaded answering her calls during the first week of every month because he already knew what was coming. She asked, he wired money, and he pretended not to be hurt that she saw him as an ATM. That was their ritual, and without it, they might not have a relationship at all.
The next morning, when she made him eggs and asked about the team, Evan shrugged and shoveled more eggs in his mouth to avoid the conversation. She’d never been fooled by his silences, and she studied him from across the table while she sipped her coffee. “How do you feel about CJ getting traded to your team?”
Evan nearly choked on a bite of egg, and for a moment, he just stared at her. “How do you even know about that?”
“Mijo, I watch baseball.” She sounded offended by the questions. “Sometimes I even watch ESPN to see if they talk about you. Not all the time, but enough. They talked about it on TV. Your friend from college got traded.”
Friend. The word wasn’t nearly strong enough, but his mother didn’t know that. She knew they’d been inseparable in college, and she knew that something had happened, but she didn’t know what. She only knew that there was a before and an after.
“You haven’t talked about him in years,” she said carefully.
Evan looked down at his plate. “No reason to.”
His mother hummed, and decades of maternal skepticism echoed in the sound.
“It’s true.”
“If you say so.”
Evan sighed, put his fork down, and leaned back in his chair. “What do you want me to say, Ma?”
“The truth would be nice.”
The truth. Yeah right. He doubted his mother wanted to hear how he’d felt the room tilt beneath him when he’d seen the trade notification in November. Or that he’d spent the rest of the month pretending not to care while every article and off-season analysis seemed determined to remind him that CJ Hartman was coming to San Diego. She definitely didn’t want to hear how seven years had somehow been enough for the hurt to scar over but not long enough for it to disappear.
“I don’t feel anything,” he said. “I barely remember him.”
His mother laughed outright. “Oh, that’s definitely a lie.”
“Ma.”
