CHAPTER 17
996 Words
Damian's POV
Marco disappeared after lunch, not subtly, he stood up, said he had a thing at the garage, pointed at me and said "don't be weird," pointed at Reina and said something in Spanish I didn't catch that made her look at the ceiling, and left. The door closed and it was just the two of us in the small warm kitchen with the remains of lunch between us and the particular quality of silence that follows a successfully passed test.
"What did he say to you?" I asked.
"Nothing relevant."
"It made you look at the ceiling."
"He's dramatic." She started clearing plates. I stood and helped without being asked, which I could tell she noticed because she didn't tell me to sit down. Small things with her. The things you didn't say were as legible as the things you did.
We moved around each other in the small kitchen with the ease of people who had spent enough time in the same spaces to have learned each other's patterns. She washed. I dried. Nobody assigned it. It just happened.
"He likes you," she said. Not looking at me.
"He tolerated me."
"For Marco that's the same thing for the first time." She handed me a glass. "He told me not to be an idiot."
"Is that what he said in Spanish?"
"Close enough."
I dried the glass and set it down and looked at the side of her face. The particular line of her jaw, the way she kept her expression even when something was moving underneath it. I'd been studying her face for weeks without meaning to and I knew it the way you know a piece of music you've listened to enough times that it plays in your head without being prompted.
"Reina."
"Don't," she said quietly. "Wait until Monday. You said Monday."
"I know." I paused. "I'm not asking for anything. I just want to say one thing."
She turned. Leaned against the counter. Arms loose at her sides, not crossed, which I'd learned meant she was letting something in rather than holding it at distance.
"This morning," I said, "before I came here, I sat in my apartment and tried to think about what my life looked like three weeks ago. What I thought I wanted. What I thought mattered." I paused. "I couldn't make it feel real. It felt like a description of someone else's priorities."
She was watching me with that full, still attention.
"I'm not saying that's you," I said. "Some of it is Celeste, and the estate, and understanding how much of what I thought was my life was actually her architecture." I held her gaze. "But some of it is you. And I wanted you to know that before tomorrow in case it changes how you answer."
"It doesn't change how I answer," she said finally. "But I'm glad you said it."
We stood there for another moment. Close. The specific closeness that kept finding us in rooms — not accidental, not pushed, just the natural distance two people arrive at when they've stopped working to maintain more.
"Tell me about your mother," I said.
She blinked. Slight — most people wouldn't catch it. "Why?"
"Because you pay her medical bills every month and you've mentioned her twice and then redirected. And I want to know the parts of your life that are heavy. Not just the parts you're comfortable showing."
Something moved through her face. The look she got when something reached a place she kept guarded.
"She's in a care facility in Queens Hospital," she said. "Early onset dementia. Diagnosed four years ago." A pause. "She has good days and bad days. On the good days she knows me. On the bad days she knows I'm someone she loves but she can't place me exactly." Her voice was steady. "I see her every Tuesday."
"Every Tuesday," I said.
"Without fail."
"Even on double shift weeks."
"Especially then." She looked at me. "She raised us alone after my father left. She worked three jobs so Marco could finish school. She didn't ask for anything from anyone." A pause. "The least I can do is show up on Tuesdays."
I thought about the woman in the hospital who had sat with me in the dark and told me I was okay and that someone was there. Who did that reflexively, for strangers, because she understood what it meant to need presence and not have it.
"Can I come with you," I said. "On Tuesday. If that's ever something you'd want."
The question landed and she went very still.
"That's—" She stopped. Started again. "That's not a small ask."
"I know."
"My mother is—it's not easy. Even on good days."
"I know that too."
She looked at me for a long time. The careful weighing that she did when something mattered and she didn't want to make the wrong choice with it.
"Ask me on Monday," she said softly.
"I will."
She almost smiled. "You're going to hold me to a lot of things on Monday."
"Yes," I said. "I am."
The afternoon light had shifted. We'd been in the kitchen longer than either of us had registered. She walked me to the door and we stood in the narrow hallway with our coats and the close quarters and I was very aware of her — of all of her, of the specific gravity she had that I'd stopped trying to explain and started just accepting as a fact of being near her.
"Thank you," I said. "For today."
"You passed," she said simply.
"Marco's assessment or yours?"
She looked up at me. "Both."
The word landed somewhere it was going to stay.
I left before I said something that wasn't meant for a hallway on a Sunday afternoon.
Downstairs I sat in the car for a moment before telling the driver to go.
One more day, I thought. Then Monday.
- Writer
