Page 69 of None Of Your Business

There was no more time.

Chest heaving, I step back and switch to the treadmill. I set it to a punishing incline and walk it out, sweat soaking through my shirt.

By six, I’ve covered seven miles. The sun is coming up outside the window. I shower, dress, and drive to my parents’ house, because some things you do every year whether you’re ready or not.

∞∞∞

Dad’s truck is gone. I expected that. He texted last night about an early appointment with the contractor working on the garage roof, then followed with three paragraphs explaining why the original quote was “daylight robbery.” I didn’t answer. He didn’t expect me to.

We all know what today is. We don’t make plans for it anymore, and we haven’t for years. There was a time when the date came with phone calls and rearranged schedules, the silent agreement that none of us should be alone. Then life started happening around it.

I let myself in with my key. “Mom?”

The kitchen is empty, with coffee still warm in the pot. The back door is open to the garden.

Outside, the grass is still wet at the edges. The garden has changed a lot over the years. Dad rebuilt half of it after Mom’s stroke, even though she told him she didn’t need it. She was furious for three days. Then she planted tomatoes in the raised beds.

I follow the stone path to the back corner. Mom’s wheelchair is angled toward the rockery, her hands resting in her lap. She designed it the year after Ethan died. It’s gray stone, filled with small white flowers I can never name, and a Japanese maple that turns deep red every autumn. There’s no plaque or declaration of what it is.

We know.

I see the tear on her cheek before she sees me.

“Mom,” I say quietly, trying not to startle her.

When she turns, the grief is still on her face.

“Oh, love.” She wipes beneath one eye with the heel of her hand.

I lean down and kiss her cheek. “Morning.”

“You’re early.”

I sit on the bench beside her chair and reach for her hand. Her fingers are cool.

We sit facing the rockery. A bee drifts through the lavender, and somewhere beyond the hedge, a lawn mower starts up.

It used to offend me that the world stayed ordinary on this date, that people went to work, bought coffee, got annoyed in traffic, and complained that the supermarket had run out of the bread they liked while Ethan was gone. Now I think the ordinary probably saved us.

Mom rubs her thumb along the back of my hand. “It doesn’t feel possible. All these years. Sometimes it feels like yesterday,” she says, her voice catching. “And sometimes it feels like it happened to another family.”

“It can be both.”

“I know. That’s the strange thing about grief—everyone tells you time makes it smaller.” Her fingers tighten around mine. “I don’t think it does. I think life gets bigger around it. You get more people. More birthdays. More rooms in the house. Josh gets married. Maya arrives. Ethan stays exactly where he was, and everything else keeps growing around the space he left.” She looks toward the maple. “Then a date comes around, or you hear a laugh that sounds like his, and you’re right back to that day.”

“Yeah.”

“You still hear his laugh?”

“Sometimes.”

“Me too.” She looks down at our joined hands. “You look tired.”

“I didn’t sleep much.”

“Dream?”

When I don’t answer, her eyes close. “Oh, Hudson.”