Because I used to beg for this.
I used to clean this place with my hands back when I was younger and still lived with her. I’d try to make the house smell like lemons with some cheap cleaner I bought with the money I make from doing Assignments for my classmates. I’d organize the trash, take out the beer cans, straighten the pillows, but it never lasted. Nothing I did was enough. She and her boyfriend never let it last.
I force myself toward the couch, my legs heavy, like each step is dragging the past behind me. I sit slowly—carefully, if I move too fast, I might shatter. The air feels thick. Pressed. My chest tightens as I sink into the cushion, already overwhelmed just by being here. Defeated in a way I didn’t expect.
She sits too, but keeps a distance. Thank God.
“I need to tell you something,” she says finally, her voice small. There’s something fragile beneath it, like she’s afraid of startling me. Or maybe herself, “I don’t know how you’re going to take it.”
“Just tell me.” I sign fast, sharper than I mean to, frustration biting at my fingertips. “Please. Just spit it out already. For Christ’s sake.”
She looks at me for a long second. Her eyes a little wet. Then she breathes in, long and deep, and everything in me coils.
“Tim is dead.”
The words leave her mouth too quietly. Like she’s testing them out. Like she’s unsure they’re even real.
“He had a complication while in the coma. He… he didn’t make it.”
I don’t react.
Not really.
At least not on the outside.
But inside?
Inside, something cracks open. Loud and violent.
My ears begin to ring. That high-pitched noise I get sometimes when my hearing aids glitch. Only this isn’t them. This is me. My body. My mind is shutting everything out. Protecting me, the only way it knows how.
She’s still talking, but her voice goes muffled, like it’s underwater. I can’t make out the words. I don’t want to. Because if I hear any more of it, I might throw up. Or scream.
And just like that, it hits me, after two weeks of trying to bury the memories in my poor brain that has been through enough, it hits me.
Walmart.
Nate’s face.
His voice.
His accusation.
“You ruined our lives. Tim has been in a coma for the past five years because of you.”
My stomach coils so tight it hurts.
It’s happening again.
The sick weight I’ve worked so hard to bury for years.
“Lucas,” I hear my mother say, clearer this time. Her voice firmer, closer. “Lucas. Breathe, my boy. Come on. Just breathe.”
I blink. She’s beside me now. I don’t even remember her moving.
Her hands reach for mine, tentative. She folds my fingers into hers, gently, like she knows I could pull away any second. But I don’t. Not because I want the comfort, not because I forgive her or even trust her. But because I have no fight left. Not in this moment.
“Don’t blame yourself for anything,” she says softly, her voice barely steady. Her eyes are red-rimmed, swollen from crying. “You might think it’s your fault, but it’s…”
