Page 72 of Coming Home

"Are you done?"

"No," he'd growl, refusing to turn his bandaged face toward me.

"Okay. Let me know when you are."

I'd sit. And I'd wait. I'd listen to the ragged sound of his breathing fill the sterile room. And inevitably, after five minutes or an hour, his massive hand would slowly slide across the white sheets, searching the empty space. I would reach out, lock my fingers tightly through his, and neither of us would ever mention the outburst again. He was a king learning to live in a broken kingdom. He was allowed to mourn his crown, and I was honored to be the person in the room while he did it.

Three weeks after the surgery, we finally brought him home.

His vision was returning in vivid, breathtaking stages.

The greens returned first, which made him let out a beautiful, booming laugh on his first morning back. He stood in front of the massive glass wall in our kitchen, staring out at the towering eucalyptus trees, and whispered, "Green," over and over again, as if he had just invented the language.

It was a quiet Tuesday afternoon when the front door flew open without a knock—Athena's signature entrance—but this time, she wasn't alone.

A woman stepped into the foyer behind her. She was small, elegant, carrying a casserole dish covered in foil. Her silver-blond hair was perfectly coiffed, and her eyes were shaped like Ralph's but softer with age.

"Mom?" Ralph shifted on the living room sofa, his recovering eyes tracking the shapes moving through the room. The moment he recognized her voice, his entire face cycled through a hilarious progression of surprise, panic, and gut-wrenching guilt.

I glanced at Athena. She simply shrugged, her hands raised in mock surrender.

"I don't know how she found out," Athena explained. "I held out for three weeks, Ralph. But she had a nightmare and wouldn't sleep unless she saw you."

Mrs. Brandt set the hot dish roughly on the kitchen counter and walked to sit down hard on the cushion right next to her son.

Without a word, she reached up and took his large face in both of her small hands. Her eyes searched his, reading the fading yellow bruises on his temples, the thinness in his cheeks, and the lingering evidence of a trauma she hadn't been permitted to shield him from.

"You should not have kept this from me, Ralph," she said, her eyes filling with thick tears. "I am your mother. I don't care if you are thirty or ninety. I am the woman who gave you life, and I had a right to be in that hospital."

"Mom, please, your blood pressure⁠—"

"My blood pressure is my business," she snapped softly, her voice breaking as she pulled his massive head down onto her fragile shoulder. "Your eyes are my business. Everything about you is my problem until the day they put me in the ground, Ralph Brandt."

This colossal, intimidating man collapsed into his mother's embrace, burying his face in her neck like a little boy who had been carrying a boulder for far too long and had finally been told he could set it down.

She held him tightly, her fingers stroking his blond hair, for a full, sacred minute. Nobody spoke. Athena stood by the counter, her arms crossed tightly over her chest, her eyes overflowing. I stayed pressed back against the kitchen island, holding my breath, not wanting to intrude on their history.

When Mrs. Brandt finally released him, she wiped her wet cheeks with the palms of her hands and stood up. She turned her fierce gaze directly onto me, taking me in with a single, sweeping look.

"Athena has told me everything," she said, her voice dropping into a softer, warmer register. "She tells me you've been the one keeping my son anchored."

"He anchored me first," I whispered.

She stared at me for a long, silent moment, reading whatever was written on my face. Then, she reached out and pulled me into a hug. It was firm, incredibly warm, and smelled faintly of lavender and home.

"Thank you," she whispered fiercely against my ear, her hands pressing into my back. "Thank you for loving him when he was too stubborn to let the rest of the world try."

* * *

More days dissolved into weeks.

The first time he saw my face with crystal clarity, we were alone in the kitchen. It was early morning, the light just beginning to break over the hills.

I was standing at the stove making tea, wearing one of his oversized gray hoodies, my hair falling down my back in an unbrushed tangle.

The silence stretched a beat too long. I turned around, a spoon balanced in my hand.

"What's wrong?" I asked.