Chapter 7: The Warmer Room
“Mom?” Jake asked, pointing at the upcoming Sunday on the calendar. “Are we going to have to drive back there for Easter?”
I set my laptop aside and looked him in the eye. I owed him absolute honesty. “I don’t think so, buddy. Not this year. Probably not ever.”
He stood there for a long moment, processing the data with the solemn gravity of a small adult.
“Is it because of the gravy thing?” he asked.
“Yes,” I answered simply. “It is.”
He nodded slowly, the exact way he does when he is carefully filing vital information away in his brain. A small, subtle release of tension dropped his shoulders.
“Good,” Jake said quietly. “I didn’t really want to go anyway.”
My breath hitched in my throat. I hadn’t known that. I had never bothered to ask. I had been so entirely consumed with managing my own complicated, toxic feelings about that house, so focused on playing the role of the dutiful daughter, that I had never once thought to ask my nine-year-old son—the boy who always sat banished at the far end of the table near the drafty window—whether he actually wanted to be there in the first place.
He looked at me with those same wide, beautiful brown eyes, free of any fear or hesitation.
“I like it better when it’s just us,” Jake said.
I reached out and pulled him into a fierce hug, pressing my cheek against his hair.
“Me, too, buddy,” I whispered into the quiet room.
And for the first time in my entire life, I meant it without any of the heavy, suffocating grief attached. It wasn’t a consolation prize. It wasn’t a retreat. It was just the clean, bright, unadulterated truth.
Me, too.
