Page 144 of One Night with Number Nineteen

And maybe that was the problem.

My mom needed me. Needed me to keep the pieces together, to fix everything, to make sure she ate and slept and drank and saw her doctors and didn’t completely fall apart.

Like she had when I left the first time.

Because she couldn’t care for herself then.

Because the one time I wasn’t there, everything fell apart.

Only…in a weird, twisted way, am I repeating the same pattern?

Making everyone else need me so they don’t fall apart, making everyone else rely on me so they won’t leave me.

Because if they need me, they have a reason to keep me around.

More quietly, she adds, “I still do, baby.”

“Mom.” I press the heels of my hands to my eyes. “You can order smoothies and call a handyman yourself.”

A blip of quiet then, “Sometimes I get overwhelmed.”

“I know,” I say, gripping tight to my patience. “That’s why I moved you out to California in the first place. So you wouldn’t have to be alone.”

“Except you hardly ever come over.”

Now my temper starts to rise. “I have a job and friends and charity work and a girlfriend—” Hell, I hope I still have one. “I have the team and contracts and practices and workouts. It’s a lot to balance even when I’m not playing eighty-four games.”

“I know. I just want to see you sometimes, okay?” Her voice breaks. “I miss you and I’m alone and⁠—”

“Don’t you think I’d want to see you more if I wasn’t having to clean out your garbage disposal?”

“No,” she snaps. “Because now that you’ve gone and got yourself a girlfriend, you’re too busy for me.”

I open my mouth, an instinctive apology rumbling up the back of my throat.

Don’t make her mad. Don’t rock the boat.

But my apology doesn’t emerge.

Instead, the truth does:

“No, Mom. I’m telling you that I want you in my life, but I can’t be your whole life. Not any longer.”

“You’re hardly here as it is,” she grinds out. “How can I be your whole life?”

“Because even when I’m not at your house, I’m still managing it!” The words explode out of me. “I’m thinking about whether or not your grocery delivery made it and hoping you remembered to go to your doctor’s appointment and wondering if you’re upset because I didn’t call enough. I worry about you putting your ice cream in the freezer and cleaning the lint trap for your dryer and—” I sigh. “I drop what I’m doing because if I don’t⁠—”

I still, words stoppering up.

If I don’t…what?

She’ll fall apart? She’ll leave? She’ll hurt herself again?

My lungs hitch, but it’s like now that I’ve started I can’t stop. “Do you know what Ally sent me in her last email?” I say quietly, adding before she can reply, “Resources for senior communities, home-care aides, live-in nurses. People who can help you when I’m not around.”

“No, she did not!” she snaps. “How dare she?”

“Because you ask me for too much.”