“Thank you,” she whispers.
I lean down and kiss her cheek. “No problem.” I meet her eyes in the mirror, and they get glassy. I smile and squeeze her shoulder. My mother, Isabella Morgan, is one of the best women I know, and a disease, despite its severity, has only dimmed her light. She refuses to give in to it, ignoring the pain and doing what she can to stem its progression. Leaving her to finish her makeup, I go to my office to get started on work.
It wasn’t my first choice to live with my parents. I graduated and came back home looking for a job. I found one, and then she was diagnosed, and I never left. I might be thirty-one years old and still live with my parents, but it’s for a good reason.
Neither of them ever directly asked me to stay. In fact, they were more than happy to give me the space to go and be my own person and find new experiences. But I knew better. My dad can’t do it all, and Mom can’t do a lot anymore. She tries, but she has her limits.
A small part of me feels trapped, but the other part of me looks at it as practice. One day I hope to have my own family, and it won’t be any less chaotic than it is now. I’m grateful nonetheless. Plus, if I lived in my own place, I’d be alone anyway. It’s nice to have people to talk to.
Mom hollers that she’s done with her makeup and I help her down the stairs. Dad and I have been talking about a chairlift for a while, but it makes Mom cry every time she hears about it. So we left it for now. But the last thing any of us want is her falling down the stairs because she can’t catch herself and… I don’t even want to think about it.
I make us breakfast and rearrange the flowers I bought yesterday. They make Mom smile, so I get them now and then. Once she’s settled, I leave her in the living room to do her thing while I head back upstairs to get to work. She keeps herself busy calling my Aunt Francesca or her friends. She consults a little for her old job and reads a lot.
Bobbing my head to the beat, I bounce over to my desk and take a bite of cereal as I check my numbers again. ABBA’sGimmie! Gimmie! Gimmie!bumps into my headphones, and I keep going line by line, chewing, checking my formula, and repeat for an embezzlement report.
I sway to the music, mouthing the words as I work. Then the music cuts out with a phone call, and I groan. I hate it when my flow is ruined. The numbers were speaking to me.
Glancing at my phone, I see it’s my Aunt Francesca.Huh.She hasn’t called me in a while.
I swipe to answer. “Hey Auntie, how are you?” I ask her.
“My darling, Mae. I hope you weren’t busy,” she says.
I glance at my screen.
“No, what’s up?” I ask her.
She’s silent on the other end, and I frown. Usually she won’t shut up and starts talking so fast I barely have a moment to get a word in.
“Auntie? Is everything okay?”
“Yes, darling, yes, but … I need your help,” she says.
I sit up. “Okay, what’s going on? Have you talked to Mom?” I ask her.
“I don’t need to talk to your mother to talk to you,” she snaps in her sassy way.
“No, you don’t, but if something is going on, then she should know too,” I tell her.
“I need you to come to Paxton because I need your help with my books,” she says.
“Um, okay, but I don’t know how long I can leave Mom. I’ll have to talk to Dad. Is that all?” I ask her.
“Yes, darling, that’s all. I was nervous to ask.”
I chuckle and take a sip of coffee. “Auntie, I’m an accountant who works from home.”
“Yes, well, I know you’re busy with your parents and your work,” she sighs.
“What can I say? I love numbers,” I say, ignoring the comment about my mom. She doesn’t mean anything by it. There’s no hidden message. A couple of times a year she comes here to spend time with her and help, which gives me a bit of a break.
She sighs. “I’ll never understand your obsession with numbers, but that’s why I need your help. When can you come? Tomorrow?” she asks.
I huff and click my mouse around to my calendar. I have time to finish this project, and I can do it from anywhere as long as I have a stable internet connection. And if memory serves me right, Paxton, Wyoming isn’t known for its reliable connection to anything. But I have to talk to my parents.
“Um, give me another day and I’ll let you know. I need to make sure it’s alright with Dad. But I also need the internet to work.”
“Yes, darling, it’s better here now.”
