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Dear Lord.
I turned and looked at Mom and asked, definitely snippy, “What?”
“Don’t ‘what’ me,” Mom returned. “I don’t know what’s going on with you and that bag of yours being back in the house, but I’m going to tell you now, you’re all kinds of fool if you don’t hold on to Eddie Chavez and hold on tight.”
“Mom—”
She gave me The Hand.
“You let go of Oscar for no good reason.” Mom informed me.
“He was possessive,” I explained.
“So what?” Mom shot back. “Good trait in a man if you ask me. Anyway, headoredyou. Still does if you want the God’s honest truth.”
Yeesh.
I went back to measuring, Mom went back to lecturing.
“You let go of Luis after he asked to marry you.”
“He lived with his mother,” I reminded her.
“So? He would have moved out for you,” Mom retorted.
“Do we have to go through this?” I asked.
Mom started talking to the ceiling. “I don’t even know what was wrong with Alex, he was a nice boy.”
Guess we had to go through it.
It was then Ada came forward and wrapped her hand around my wrist. I stopped measuring and looked at her.
She stared into my eyes, smiled a small, kind of sad smile, let go of my wrist and turned. “There’s aWorld’s Most Unbelievable Police Chases Caught on Videostarting about now. Let’s watch it at my place.” she said to Mom and Lottie.
Both my mother and sister opened their mouths to argue but Ada must have given them a look. I didn’t know Ada was capable of giving a look, but whatever she did, it worked.
They left.
I watched the space they were in for a long time forcing, with a superhuman effort, my mind to go blank.
Then I baked.
* * *
I swungby the hospital to visit Dad.
They said it was good he made it through the night. They took him off the critical list and would move him out of ICU if things kept on as they were.
They told me he’d been awake for a while but he was asleep when I went in to see him.
I sat, holding his hand and telling him about my day.
Then I told him about my decision.
He didn’t respond. He didn’t give me any judgments, attitude or advice and certainly not The Hand.
This, I thought was good, even though I’d rather he didn’t do it because he didn’t have any judgments, attitude or advice, not because he was a couple of brain pathways shutting down away from a coma.
