The last time I saw my mom—looking small and pale in a hospital bed—college was still half a life away for me. Her worries must have been so much more immediate than that: who would leave notes in my lunch box when she was gone and who would talk to me about boys one day, who would make faces out of blueberries on my waffles and who would bring me soup when I was home sick.
I’m sure she knew my dad would try his best. But she couldn’t have known that he’d follow her so soon, just over a year later, and that Uncle Jake and Aunt Sofia would have to be the ones to step in, to fill those gaps the best they could.
And they tried, all of them. For that first year she was gone, my dad left his own notes in my lunch box with little doodles of penguins across the bottom, the only thing he knew how to draw. And later it turned out Leo was pretty good at making funny faces out of breakfast foods. Aunt Sofia was the one to tell me what I needed to know about boys, and whenever I was sick Uncle Jake would stay home from work to bring me bowl after bowl of chicken noodle soup.
This brand of kindness, this closing of the circle around me, it’s more than just love. It’s a kind of luck too, to have these people in my life.
But it’s not the same as if my mom was here. How could it be?
And now—now I have to do this without her too.
I swallow hard, pressing my hands together in my lap. Aunt Sofia is still watching me, her eyes steady and warm, but I can’t seem to finish the sentence.
I want…
I want…
I want…
It’s like something inside me has crashed, and to my horror the words bubbling up in my throat, desperate and unbidden, are these:I want my mom.
But I don’t say it.
“I want Stanford,” I whisper instead, and Aunt Sofia nods. Across the quad, a tour group is moving slowly in our direction. The guide walks backward, gesturing with his hands, trailed by even sets of eager-looking parents and bored-looking kids. We watch their halting progress for a little while before she turns back to me.
“It’s no secret that we’d love to have you closer,” she says, her eyes shining. “I only have two little ducklings. And even though they’re not so little anymore, I’m always going to want to keep an eye on them. You have to know that.”
All I can do is nod; to my surprise I feel a tug of sadness at this. In all my daydreams about Stanford, I’ve thought only of going home again. Somehow it didn’t fully sink in that I’d be leaving home too.
“But if Stanford is what you want, then we’re behind you,” she continues, reaching over and placing a hand on top of mine. “Always.”
“Thank you,” I say, feeling dazed.
“And I want you to know I didn’t bring you here to make a case for Northwestern, though I do think you’d love it. They have amazing programs in philosophy and literature and…” She stops abruptly. “Well, that’s not the point. I just wanted to make sure you saw that there are other places out there. Other options. Other ways to be happy. Because that’s all we want. For you to be happy.”
I’m reminded of the days right after my dad’s funeral, when Aunt Sofia was the one to stay behind, packing up the house and tying up all the loose ends because Uncle Jake couldn’t bear to do it. Those first few nights she’d wait on the other side of the door while I cried, her voice muffled as she spoke to me. She never saidYou’ll be okaythe way so many other adults did. Instead it was always simplyYou’re okay,as if this was an inarguable fact, as if she knew something I didn’t.
And I find myself repeating this now, though I have no idea whether it’s true. Even so, I try to say it like she used to, like it’s a certainty, a fact. “I’m okay.”
She smiles, and I realize then why it’s been so hard to ask her about the money. It’s because I know she’ll tell me the truth.
“Aunt Sofe,” I say, looking at my hands. “Can I ask you a question?”
She nods. “Of course.”
“Were you guys upset when I didn’t take the money?”
First she looks confused. Then her expression shifts into something more startled, before finally settling into amusement. “The lottery money?”
I nod, unable to meet her eye. “I turned it down without even asking you and Uncle Jake, and you guys have done so much for me, and paid for everything all these years.”
“Alice,” she says, scooting closer so she can put an arm around me. “I hope you know that not only do we not expect or want anything from you, we’d happily pay to keep you. It’s been a privilege having you with us.”
I laugh with relief, but it comes out wetly, like a sob.
“And you know,” she continues, “that you’re as much my daughter as Leo is my son. Maybe I don’t say that enough.”
“No,” I say quietly. “You do.”
