Paige walks beside me through the corridor, her hand in mine, turquoise at her throat. She wore a sundress. I've never seen her in a dress. Light blue cotton, boots underneath because she's still Paige, and when she came out of the hotel bathroom this morning, I stood there with my coffee going cold in my hand.
"You're staring," she'd said, smoothing the fabric over her thighs.
"Yeah."
"That gonna be a problem?"
"Probably."
She'd kissed me. Quick. Coffee-flavored. Steadying. Like she knew what today was going to cost me and was frontloading the good.
Room 412. The door's cracked. Wyatt's voice carries into the hall, low, talking to someone. I stop walking.
Paige squeezes my hand.
"Right here," she says.
"I know."
"Whenever you're ready."
My brother's voice. I haven't heard it in twelve years except in dreams, and even in dreams it's the voice from the barbecue joint, laughing at something Delaney said, younger, lighter. This voice is different. Tired. Thin.
I push the door open.
The room's small. Single window, blinds half-drawn, afternoon light cutting across the linoleum. Machines beeping. An IV pole. Flowers on the sill that are starting to brown at the edges, which means they've been here a while.
And my mother.
She's half the woman I remember. That's the first thing that registers, and it registers in my knees. The humming woman from the kitchen, the one who cut pound cake and ran a house and filled a room just by being in it, is eighty pounds of bone and papery skin propped up on pillows. Her eyes are closed. Her hands are on the blanket, and the veins show blue through skin that used to be brown from gardening.
Wyatt stands from the bedside chair.
He looks like me. That's the thing nobody warned me about. Twelve years, and he's filled out, and the jaw is the same, and the eyes are the same, and the hands gripping the chair back are Harrison hands, and I hate how much we look like the same man.
"Aiden." His voice cracks on the second syllable.
"Wyatt."
His eyes go to Paige. To our hands. Back to me.
"Mama," he says, touching her arm. "Mama, wake up. He's here."
Her eyes open. Slow. Unfocused. The medication's got her somewhere between here and wherever she goes when she sleeps. Then her gaze finds me and sharpens, and the sound she makes is small and wet and cuts straight through my chest.
"Aiden." A whisper. "Oh, baby. Oh, my baby."
My hand tightens on Paige's so hard she'll have bruises.
"Hey, Mama."
"Come here. Come here, let me see you."
I cross the room. Sit in the chair Wyatt gives up. Her hand finds my face, trembling, cold, and she touches my beard and my cheek and the line of my jaw.
"You're so big," she says. "When did you get so big?"
"Been a while, Mama."
