The light through the blinds is this washed-out grey, the color of a world that doesn’t give a shit.I stumble inside, prepared for the usual—emptiness, stale air, nothingness.
But then I see her.
Mom is sitting on the couch, rigid as stone, with a cardboard box on the table in front of her.For a moment I just stand there, suspended, unable to process the shape of her here, in this place.Her eyes lift to mine, and they fucking wreck me—full of something between hope and heartbreak, and hope is always the more dangerous of the two.
“What are you doing here?”My voice sounds like gravel being dragged across concrete.
“Checking to see if my son is still alive and breathing.”
“I’m breathing,” I mutter.
Although barely.
“Nate,” she whispers, “what are you doing to yourself?”
“Coping.”The word feels cheap in my mouth, like a lie I didn’t bother wrapping properly.
She exhales, sharp, brittle.“We’re all coping.What you’re doing is slow suicide.”
I laugh—short and empty.
“You don’t get it.”I move toward the kitchen, muscle memory dragging me toward Jay’s old whiskey stash.The cabinet is empty, of course.Jay’s always been one step ahead when it comes to my self-destruction.
“You won’t find what you’re looking for.”
Her voice is too calm, too quiet, the kind of tone that slices through you.I turn slowly, jaw tight enough that I taste blood.
“What do you want from me?You show up here with your sad eyes and a box full of shit—what are you trying to do?”
“I didn’t come to fix you,” she says softly.“I came to tell you the truth.”
“Now you want to tell the truth?”My voice fractures.“Now?Really Mom?”
She opens the box, hands trembling.“I started packing up Jake’s things.”
The words hit harder than any withdrawal, harder than any drug.
“You’re already erasing him?”I snap.
She pulls out a record—Bob Dylan—and it steals the air from my lungs.Jake’s handwriting scrawled across the sleeve punches straight into my chest.
“He saved for weeks to buy this for your birthday,” she whispers.“He begged me to give him chores to do around the house just so he could say he was the one that bought it.”
“Stop.”The word claws out of me.“Don’t use him like that.”
Her eyes flash—not anger, just pain sharpened into something with an edge.
“I know deep down you want the truth” she asks.“So sit down.”
I don’t want to.I actually want to bolt.
Or break something or claw my way out of my own fucking skin.But something in her voice—something final—pins me in place.So instead, I sink into the chair ignoring how my body shakes and my skin burns.She sits across from me, hands twisting into the fabric of her blouse like she’s bracing for impact.
“I need to tell you about your father,” she starts.
I scoff.“What’s left to tell me about that piece of shit?”
Her next words freeze the entire room.
