Page 13 of Nobody Told Me Thrift Shops Sell Stolen Dragon Heirlooms

“I can manage the door.”

“Yes, sir,” she said, her tone that of a woman indulging a man who could turn into a dragon but was offended by basic offers of assistance.

She opened the door anyway, then stepped aside.

My mother sat by the long windows in her preferred chair, a wood-carved rocker upholstered in faded green silk. My father had once spent two months restoring it because she’d said the old fabric looked “a bit worn.” Beyond the glass, the late afternoon lay gold over the gardens. The hedge maze beyond, once tall enough to swallow a child and all his certainty, had been cut down years ago to waist height when my mother had begun to wander. Now, its paths were visible from above, all mystery traded for safety.

My father had never once complained about having to change the shape of the world around the woman he loved.

Love, in my experience, was never casual. It had systems and schedules. It included alterations to architecture, rotating staff assignments, consultations with physicians and office relocations. The upstairs sitting room had been converted into a more open space to make supervision easier. My father scheduled and rescheduled his business meetings around my mother’s better days and hours. When her memory had worsened, I had also moved my work closer to her room.

Nothing about devotion in this house had ever been effortless, but it had been intentional and done with the utmost love.

My mother turned at the sound of the door, her face lighting up when she saw me.

Sometimes, her beauty still caught me off guard. She looked only a few years older than I was. The Fog had taken so much from her, but not that. She remained all fine bones and luminous skin. Today, her dark hair was pinned back loosely at the nape of her neck, with silver combs she sometimes forgot she owned. Anyone seeing her across a room for the first time would have thought her striking. If only her mind had remained so preserved.

“There you are,” she said, reaching for me as I put the tray down.

I bent automatically so she could touch my cheek. Her hand was cool and light, and I leaned into the familiarity of it.

“You’ve been brooding again,” she said. “It’s very bad for the complexion.”

“I’ll alert the doctors.”

“You joke, but your face has become too sharp.”

I sat opposite her and poured the tea. She watched me do it with complete satisfaction, as though this, at least, remained one of the world’s reliable offerings.

“You remembered the milk,” she said.

“I usually do.”

“Mm. Good boy.”

I handed her the cup.

“What’s that?” she asked.

I followed her gaze. “Biscuits.”

I sat in the chair opposite hers and poured my own tea. My mother turned back to the window, watching the garden with that attentive stillness she’d retained even as so much else was taken from her. She still loved flowers and hated overcooked fish. She still preferred old records to streaming music because she thought the latter lacked proper reverence.

The losses had come in stranger places. Time and orientation, that ordinary scaffolding by which one remained attached to a shared day, had vanished for her.

My father would be here soon. He timed his afternoon meetings around her tea time whenever he could, and when he couldn’t, he found another way to return to her before dusk.

My mother looked at me again, and something shifted and softened in her face, like light changing when a cloud passed over the sun and the whole character of a room altered with it.

“Oh,” she said, very tenderly, and her hand lifted from the arm of the chair toward mine. “Rafa.”

My father’s nickname in her voice still had the power to make the room briefly smaller. She said his name with such quiet certainty, such familiar warmth, that for a moment I could almost feel the shape of him in the space between us: the life they had built, the simple expectation that if she reached out, he would be there.

I offered her my hand.

She took it and held on, studying my face with deep concentration, as if the truth might declare itself if she only looked long enough. I stayed still and let her. There was no use rushing her through these moments. I’d learned that too much correction only hurt more. Better, when I could manage it, to answer the feeling and not the facts.

Her thumb brushed slowly across my knuckles.