“I’m not going,” I repeat, flat and final. “I’d really appreciate it if you respect that.”
There’s a flicker across Marcus’s face. The steady control he’s held all evening fades. Beneath it, he looks just plain tired. His next words carry a different kind of caution.
“You really need to come home, Lance,” he sighs.
“Why?”
He holds my gaze and his voice stays steady with visible effort.
“Mom’s sick.”
The world comes to a halt.
“They discovered it eight weeks ago. She’s been with specialists. They’re moving forward with treatment, but it’s serious. She asked me not to say anything to you. Yet.” He pauses. “I couldn’t sit here and not tell you, now I know you’re choosing to stay.”
I hear myself ask it before I’ve decided to. “Is it the same one as Aunt Matilda?”
Marcus holds still, the gravity of the news brutal.
“Yes,” he answers, resignation settling into his voice.
I take in my brother’s face and the words hit me. I heard every single one of them, but I’m not entirely sure I’m on the other side of them yet.
Beside me, George remains silent. Maybe he remembers what happened to my favorite aunt from those long, random conversations about family years ago. But I don’t think he’s ever fully understood the weight I carry from that part of my life, or the choice I’ve made because of it.
His hand settles flat and warm between my shoulder blades. He says nothing. I’m grateful beyond what I can currently account for, that he’s standing right where he is.
32
Lance
The flight from San Diego to Seattle is two hours and twenty minutes.
I travel a few days after Marcus left San Diego, after I managed to request an emergency leave from work. I spend the first hour staring at the window with eyes not really seeing anything. The rest of the way, I spend reading my mother’s latest lab results on my phone, the ones Marcus forwarded without any other messages accompanying. Just his way of saying he didn’t know what to do with them either.
I land at Sea-Tac at eleven forty-three. I have one bag and no plan beyond getting to the house.
I take the train to my mother’s house on a Thursday. Marcus offered to drive me, but I told him I’d rather go alone. I needed the time to stare out the window at the city I grew up in and figure out how the hell I was going to explain being gone this long without sounding like a complete asshole. The truth wasn’t exactly winning any awards either.
The whole ride I tried to produce something decent to say to her. By the time the train pulled in, I still had nothing.
The house looks exactly the same from the outside. Same iron gate and stone path, same maples that have gotten entirelytoo big for their own good. Pale stone facade, three stories, tall black-framed windows. That wide front door with the brass hardware that always gleams like it’s been polished by someone with too much time on their hands.
I linger at the gate, remembering all the times I stormed out swearing I wouldn’t be back for a while. I did come home for the holidays when I could swing the time off, but even those visits got fewer and farther between until the gaps felt like years.
Turns out it took my mother getting diagnosed with Lynch syndrome and gastric cancer to finally drag me back home. Nice one, Universe. I’ll be carrying what that says about me for the rest of my life.
Patrice answers the door, still impeccably poised in her fifties. She’s been my parents’ chief of staff longer than I can remember, and nothing in this house happens without her seal of approval. A real smile breaks across my face. She returns it, before taking my coat. “Your mother is in the sitting room.”
The house feels different. Sure, it still smells like old wood and fancy candles, but there’s a faint clinical undertone now. Halfway down the hall I spot the large weekly pill organizer, a blood pressure cuff, and a pulse oximeter. In the corner of one room, a hospital-grade IV pole stands folded and ready.
Somebody has actually set this all up. Relief washes over me first, followed immediately by the sharp sting of guilt that it wasn’t me, the actual nurse in the family, who did this for my own mother.
The sitting room has been rearranged. I notice the changes instantly, old instincts kicking in. The main chair is closer to the window now for better light. There’s a small rolling table positioned perfectly for meals or meds. A woman in teal scrubs looks up, gives me a quick professional nod, and slips out without a word—the smooth exit of a home care nurse who knows exactly whenshe’s not needed.
I’m glad my mother has good people around her. Even if it should have been me.
In the chair by the window sits Eleanor Bradford, sixty-eight years old and she has spent the last thirty-five of those years being the most composed person in any room she walks into. In all that time, I’ve never once seen her look anything other than exactly how she intended.
