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PROLOGUE

They were fighting again. They were always fighting these days. Brax stepped over his baseball bat to get to his desk. He wanted his headphones.

“I’m leaving.”

“The hell you are! Your daughter needs you!”

Brax stopped mid-stride.

“Lou, you don’t understand. I can’t handle it. It’s too much.”

“You can’t handle it? You can’t handle it? CiCi is lying in a hospital bed, and you say you can’t handle it? I can’t effing believe you.”

Brax had never heard his dad sound so angry. Had his mom really said she was leaving? That couldn’t be right. Not with CiCi so sick.

“This is the third time she’s been in the hospital. Every time they say she’s going to get better, and then she relapses. I keep having to put my life on hold. I can’t be expected to live like this.”

“Our daughter’s only seven years old. Please, Candy, you can’t do this. She needs you. She needs her mother.”

Now his dad didn’t sound angry. He sounded like he was begging. Like when Kenny Renfrew begged the coach for a third chance and started crying.

“No, Lou, I’m already packed.”

“But tomorrow she starts another round of treatments,” his dad said. Was he going to cry?

“I’m just taking the car, my clothes and what’s in the checking account. I’m not touching our savings. You’ll be fine.”

“How can you say that? How? How am I expected to tell CiCi that her mother left?”

“You’ll think of something. I don’t know. Tell her my mother had an accident, and I needed to be with her.”

“You hate your mother. We haven’t seen her in four years. What the hell am I going to tell Brax?” Now he was starting to sound mad again.

Brax strained to hear them, but they weren’t talking. Finally his mother said something. “I’ll go talk to him. You might not understand what I’m doing, but my son will. He knows what I’m going through. He’s seen my pain. He’s seen my sacrifice.”

“Bullshit, Candy. Brax will be madder than me.”

“You’ve never understood the special bond between a mother and her son. Braxton will understand.”

Brax heard his parents’ door open. He could hear his mother’s heels clicking on the hardwood floor. They stopped outside his door. His mother knocked softly.

“Braxton, honey, Mom needs to talk to you. Can I come in?”

He went over to the door and opened it. His mom was dressed nice, in a skirt and sweater with necklaces. Her hair was all poofed and curled, too. Like the old times when she would go out with her friends from work. Or when she went out with Sally or Kathy. If he hadn’t heard the fight he would have thought it was just another night out, like normal.

His mom came into his room and sat on the side of his bed. He was supposed to sit beside her, for one of their talks, like normal. He didn’t. He sat in his desk chair and turned it around so he could watch her.

“I guess you’re too old for mother-and-son talks on the side of the bed, like we used to have, huh?” She gave him her sad face. He knew he was supposed to go sit next to her now, but he didn’t. Dad was right. He was mad.

“What do you want to talk about?” Maybe he could talk her out of leaving. Dad was right about another thing too; CiCi needed her.

His mom leaned forward, her elbows on her knees. “You’ve caught me crying sometimes, haven’t you?”

He nodded.

“The last two years have been really hard with your sister in and out of the hospital,” she whispered.

“Yeah, for all of us,” he said clearly. “But mostly for CiCi.” He saw his mother wince.