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After some awkward silence, our conversation transitions to easier topics. Sydney tells me about an art exhibit she went to last weekend and asks me about basketball. She knows better than to bother questioning me about my classes. This is her first week back, and preparations are already in full swing for the fall play.
About an hour has passed before she glances at her phone. “I didn’t know you were coming, so I made plans this afternoon…”
“No worries. But, uh, before I go, I have to tell you something.”
Sydney scans my face, her expression vacillating between curiosity and worry before finally landing on uncertain. “Okay…”
“It’s about our mom.”
She sucks in a sharp breath, her face a mask of pure shock. “The woman whoabandonedus, you mean?”
I nod, not sure if that phrasing bodes well or poorly for this revelation. If the anger threading through her words means she won’t care or reveals that she still cares too much, the same way I do.
Of the two of us, Sydney is the one I would characterize as sympathetic and understanding. I’m the apathetic asshole. I care about three things: Cassia, basketball, and my sister. Pretty sure Sydney’s list is much longer.
IfI’mstruggling this much with this…I’m terrified how it’ll affect her. But I’m resolved. This is the whole fucking reason I came all the way here—to tell her this in person.
Sydney’s eyebrows creep higher and higher the longer I’m silent.
“What is it?” she finally asks.
“I don’t know how to tell you this. Wasn’t sure if Ishould. I found out by accident and I’ve been debating on whether to burden you with it. Especially after…” I clear my throat.
“Just tell me.”
“She has cancer, Syd. It’s bad; she’s dying. I was at the hospital with Mark at the end of the summer and ran into her getting treatment.”
“What kind of cancer?” Her voice has dropped to a near-whisper, sounding like a child’s.
“Liver. She needs a transplant. I got tested, but I’m not a match. She’s on a list.”
“You gottested?” Her tone is incredulous. “You would have, what? Given her your liver?”
“Part of it, yeah. Mine would regrow.”
“Still, that’s a major surgery, right?”
“It’s surgery, yeah.” I deliberate, then add, “If I’d been a match and gone through with it, I probably would have missed most of the season.”
Sydney looks shocked. “You would have given upbasketball? Forher?”
“I was…considering it. She’s, you know, our mom.”
“She’s astranger, Holden. I can’t believe you even recognized her at the hospital. She must look totally different.”
There are unspoken questions in her words. She wants to know more but isn’t sure about asking.
“She looks sick,” I say. “And I…” I exhale, debating and then deciding to come completely clean. Might as well get it all out there. I’m in this far. “It wasn’t the first time I’d seen her since she left. She showed up when we were in high school, right after Dad died. Once at the house when you weren’t home. Then again, at the high school after one of my practices. I wasn’t sure if I should tell you. There was so much other stuff going on. We were both grieving…”
Sydney blinks at me. “You saw her? Talked to her?Yearsago?”
“Yes.”
“Did she ask about me?”
This. This is exactly why I never said a word. Because I hear the tentative hope in her voice, the foolishness that I had too. That she’d shown up to express regrets, to make amends. To rebuild bridges that had been reburned.
But she didn’t offer any of those things. Didn’t even give me the satisfaction of telling her that we wanted nothing to do with her. That she had to live with her mistakes.
