Three hours.
Plenty of time for the fantasy to dissolve.
For the image of Sage under bar lights to be replaced with my mother at a kitchen table, pretending she wasn’t tired. Pretending she hadn’t been doing too much for too long.
The radio played something soft and familiar. I turned it off.
Somewhere between exits, the truth settled heavy and unavoidable in my chest:
Tonight wasn’t happening.
The bar.
The boat.
The promise of another summer night picking up where the last left off.
All of it disappeared the second my phone rang.
Because this was the line I’d never crossed.
I could chase romance.
I could chase something bright and new and easy.
But when it came down to it —
I was still the kid who drove north without thinking, because family didn’t wait.
And Boston, for all its shine and possibility, suddenly felt very far away.
They discharged her just after dusk.
No sirens. No drama. Just paperwork and instructions and a nurse who smiled too kindly, like she already knew how this story usually went.
“I’m fine,” Ma said for the third time, tugging her cardigan tighter around herself as I pulled the car around. “I told them I’m fine.”
“You fainted,” I said, opening her door.
She waved it off. “I stood up too fast.”
I didn’t argue.
I drove.
The roads up north were darker than I remembered. Fewer streetlights. Longer stretches of nothing. Pine and shadow and the hum of tires on asphalt.
She dozed in the passenger seat, chin tipped toward her chest, hands folded in her lap. I kept glancing over, just to make sure she was still breathing easy.
We pulled into the driveway a little after eight.
The house looked smaller than it used to.
Same pale-blue siding. Same sagging front step I’d meant to fix every summer since college. Porch light flickering like it always had.
I killed the engine and went around to help her out.
“I don’t need—” she started.
