She looks up and tries to smile but fails miserably.
"Hey. You're early."
"Traffic was light." I cross to her, notice the redness around her eyes. She's been crying. "How is she?"
"Declining." The word comes out flat. Empty. "They upgraded her meds. Put her on stronger pain management. There's a night nurse now."
"Good."
"You did that." Not an accusation. Just a statement. "You authorized it all without telling me."
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because she needed it and you would have argued. Watching you suffer over something I could fix was unbearable, so I decided to do what was needed on my own."
Her hand tightens around the pendant. "I don't know whether to thank you or be furious with you."
"Be both. I usually am."
That gets a small laugh. Barely there, but real.
I guide her to the car, help her into the back seat. Marco pulls out of the parking lot, and we sit in silence for the first few minutes. But I keep watching her hand. That rhythmic movement. Thumb over metal.
"Tell me about it," I say finally.
She looks up. "About what?"
"The pendant. You touch it when you're upset. I've seen you do it a million my times." I gesture to her hand. "What does it mean to you?"
For a moment, I think she won't answer. That she'll deflect or change the subject or tell me it's just a piece of jewelry.
Instead, she unclasps the chain. Holds the cross in her palm.
"It was my mother's. She gave it to me on my sixteenth birthday." She runs her thumb over the worn gold. "She said it was a reminder that I was loved. That even when everything else fell apart—when my father left, when the bills piled up, when the world felt too big and too cruel—I had something solid to hold onto."
I wait. Don't interrupt. Don't mock or dismiss or try to fix.
"It's stupid, probably. A piece of metal on a chain. But it feels like... I don't know. A promise." She looks at me, and there's something raw in her eyes. "All the promises a parent makes to a child.I'll keep you safe. I'll love you no matter what. I'll fight for you even when I'm too tired to fight for myself. And my mom kept those promises. Every single one. Even when it cost her everything."
The words hit harder than they should, because I understand.
I had a parent who made promises too and tried to keep them until the weight crushed her.
"My mother gave me something," I hear myself say. "Not a pendant. A watch."
Bianca goes still.
"It was my grandfather's. Expensive. Old-fashioned. Gold casing worn smooth from decades of wear. The kind of thing you're supposed to pass down through generations. A family heirloom that carries weight beyond its monetary value." I pull it from my pocket—I've been carrying it since she died, though I never wear it. Can't bring myself to put it on. "She gave it to me the week before she... before I found her on the bathroom floor."
"Dante—"
"She called me into her room. It was a good day—one of the few near the end where she wasn't drunk. Where her hands didn't shake and her eyes could focus." I turn the watch over in my hands, feeling the familiar weight. "She said it was a reminder that time is all we have. That we can waste it or use it, but we can't get it back. That every second matters because we don't know how many we have left."
My voice cracks. I clear my throat.
"She wanted me to use mine better than she’d used hers. To not let shame or fear or other people's expectations steal years I'd never get back. To not let my father's mistakes define my life the way his mistakes defined hers."
