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It doesn’t really seem like something he can promise, but I nod as if I believe him.
He pulls up to the front entrance. “I'll park and meet you inside.”
"You don't have to—"
"Yeah, blah blah blah. I know,” he says. “But I am." His mouth curves slightly to one side, and he looks at me in a way no one else ever has: as if he knows me. As if he knows everything I'm thinking, everything I fear, everything I need. What would it be like, going through life with someone who knows you that well, someone with whom you don’t have to pretend? It would feel like a miracle.
“If you’re coming up,” I say, “I need to tell you two things—first, Rob is on his way back from Amsterdam. Second, my parents still think Rob and I are engaged.”
His jaw tightens. “You broke up him with him two months ago. How can they not know?”
I try to speak, and my mouth twists with the effort not to dissolve into tears. “My dad wanted to see me married so badly. He still does. I figured he’d drink more if he knew it wasn’t happening.”
“Are you going to tell him the truth now?”
“I can’t,” I whisper.
Brendan makes his disapproval clear, but his opinion is irrelevant. The chances of my dad living through the surgery are so poor. If he’s going to leave the world, I want him to do it feeling like it’s safe for him to go, and I’ll tell whatever lie I have to in order for that to happen.
* * *
Upstairs, I enter the room holding my breath, both expecting the best—my dad awake, laughing—and the worst—my mother weeping, all the monitors unplugged. It's neither one, really. My dad is asleep, and my mom sits, looking older and more rumpled than I've ever seen her.
"How is he?" I ask.
She sighs. "The same."
"You should go home, Mom. Get cleaned up and rest a bit. I'll stay here."
"I shouldn’t leave you here alone. What if you need to leave and he wakes up?”
"Oh…um…" I stutter. "I won't be alone. Uh, Brendan is here."
My mother's mouth pinches. "Why is he here? And where's he staying?"
When I tell her he stayed with me last night, she looks as if I told her I’d been running a brothel out of her condo. “Is he the reason you were too busy to answer your phone on Saturday?”
“Oh right. Because Dad getting drunk and hitting a telephone pole is my fault.”
“You could have prevented it.”
“Don’t,” I say, rounding on her. “Don’t you dare blame me. It wasn’t my job to prevent this. It was Dad’s, and it was yours, and you never lifted a finger. You yelled at me when I tried to get Dad to go to rehab. So if you’re hell-bent on finding a culprit, start with yourself.”
Her mouth opens, but no words emerge. And then, predictably, her eyes well. “I can’t believe you chose right now to attack me.”
“I’m not attacking you. I’m telling you the truth. Grow up and listen to it for once.”
When Brendan enters a few minutes later, we’re sitting in stony silence. She's drawn herself up, shoulders back.
“I think I’ll go home for a while,” she announces, looking at neither of us. “Make sure to let me know when your fiancé arrives.”
After she leaves, Brendan takes the seat beside me and squeezes my hand. He knows. He knows exactly what I’m feeling: that I’m so tired of supporting my mother and taking the blame, but that part of me agrees with her assessment. He just knows.
We look at my father. He’s so still I’d wonder if he was already gone were it not for the heart monitor.
“All he wanted was to see me married, Brendan,” I whisper. “And now he won’t, all because I was scared he’d make a fool of himself at the wedding and because I didn’t want him to drink more leading up to it.”
He squeezes my hand. “You can’t blame yourself for that.”
