Mom and Dad are curled up in bed. His arms are around her, and her head rests on his chest. Their eyes are closed. I watch them breathe, in and out, in and out. I slip closer toward the door. The moment feels too personal for me to be there, too intimate. I’m reminded of all the times I felt like an outsider in their love. The stolen kisses in the kitchen, the glances across the table, the Saturday nights spent sharing the same arm chair.
That was their marriage, not our family, but they felt like the same thing. They still do.
“Knock knock,” I whisper.
My mom stirs.
“Honey,” she says. “You’re back.”
She shifts off my dad, and I hand her a coffee. He wakes, too.
“This better not be decaf,” he says.
“Today’s oat milk latte is full force.”
I lean down to kiss him on the cheek. I smell hospital, sour breath, the distant scent of urine.
I need to get us out of here.
“I have a plan,” I tell them. And then, like Sylvia before me, I show them the ticket.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
My mother’s eyes go wide. My father squints like he can’t quite make out what I’m holding.
“It’s Sylvia’s,” I say. “She gave it to me.”
Marcella gasps. My father does not shift his gaze from my hand.
“We have it now,” I say.
“I can’t believe this,” my mother says. She is still stuck on Sylvia, on her mother, on this folded story, tucked away.
“All this time,” Marcella says. “She never said anything.”
“The question is just how far back we’ll need to go. What did the doctor say? We can’t put a stent in now but maybe ten years ago? Twelve? What do you think?” I look between them.
I see my mother blink at me and then something settles over her face. I don’t want to read it, don’t want to recognize it, and so I turn to my father.
His face is more set, more stoic.
“Dad,” I say. “Say something.”
He shakes his head. “Honey,” he says. He looks to me. I see it all there, right in his eyes. “No.”
“You heard me,” I say. “I have this.”
Dave exhales lightly. “We can’t use it.”
I think for a moment that they don’t understand, that they think that it won’t work, that the ticket is meant for Sylvia alone. “It’ll work,” I say. “I can feel it. You’re going to die if we don’t.”
“Listen to her,” Marcella says.
Dave and she lock eyes, and he says everything he can’t out loud to her. I don’t know what he is saying, but I know she understands it all. She blinks away from him, steadies herself with a breath.
“You’ll do the surgery,” my mother says. “It won’t be fun but they’ve advanced the technology. It’ll buy us more time.”
“What?” I turn on her. “You can’t be serious.”
