I’m not ready. But I’ll never be ready, so I might as well get it over with.
She looks old.
So much older than I expected.
They say that, before the Fall, it was common for people to live into their seventies, eighties, and even nineties, but no one does anymore. Growing up, Old Henderson was always the oldest person in our village by almost a decade before he even turned seventy.
It’s not that people don’t get gray hair and wrinkles now, but most of them die before those are the dominant features of their appearance.
Mother is only in her early fifties, but she looks old and frail—ancient—in the big bed. Her hair is almost entirely gray, and her shriveled face is unrecognizable from the strong, rosy-cheeked woman she used to be.
My heart drops into my gut and keeps dropping. I takequiet steps into the room until I reach the chair beside the bed, and then I sink into it.
Her eyes are closed, and her breathing wheezes loudly. I assume maybe she’s asleep.
Teresa is standing in the doorway, her face twisting briefly until she manages to smile at me. She mouths, “Come get me if you need me,” before she disappears down the hall.
So now I’m alone with our mother. I just sit there.
What else can I do?
I sit for a long time—maybe it’s not long, but it feels that way—until she starts coughing.
It’s a hoarse, choked, painful hacking, and the spasms rattle her entire body.
She reaches a hand out blindly. When I notice a glass of water on the side table, I grab it and hold it to her mouth. She tries to take it out of my hand as she gets a couple of swallows down, and she ends up slopping it down her chin and neck.
There’s a hand towel on the table too, so I use it to pat at the moisture.
She makes a disgusted face and swats me away. She lies limply and wheezes until she recovers from the coughing fit. Then she finally raises her eyelids into a squint and peers up at me.
“Oh,” she rasps after several seconds. “It’s you.”
“It’s me.”
“Where’s the other one?”
The other one.
I have heard and witnessed that, near death, the mind stops functioning like normal. Words and names and habits as familiar as our own reflections start drifting down into a dark void. Even personalities can change. The kindest of souls might get angry and bitter. The strongest of wills might give up.
But that’s not what this is.
I honestly believe that Teresa and I have always been no more thanthat oneandthe other oneto her.
“Teresa is resting. I can get you whatever you need.”
“You can’t make it up to me right at the end.”
I should simply ignore this. No good can come from having this conversation right now. But restraint has never been my instinct or my habit. “Make what up to you?”
“Dis—” She’s wracked by another coughing fit. It goes on a long time before she finally finishes. “Disloyalty.”
My spine stiffens. I should hold it back. I should shut up. If Ben or Teresa were here right now, their presence would give me the strength to do so. But all I can do is keep my voice mild as I say, “You’re the one who left us.”
“You know—” More coughing. “You know why. At least Teresa got herself an impressive man and prosperous life that’s a credit to… to me. You gave yours up for nothing.”
I bite my lip as she coughs some more.
