His mother had not spoken since they left the oncology wing. He drove too carefully, slowing before every bump, and she sat with her head against the window and her eyes closed and he did not ask why.
She never used to wear scarves. She used to joke that they made her look like a Victorian widow, or a fragile woman preserved in an old oil painting. Now she wore them because the cold irritated her scalp and her skin bruised too easily and even the wind had started to feel like too much. He remembered her tossing one across the room years ago, laughing as she said they were for women who needed rescuing. He would give anything to rescue her from this.
She looked small in the passenger seat. Too small. His mother had never been small. She had been a force that moved through life demanding i
