“You know what she’s going to say,” I told Lucas now, drying my hands. “She’s going to comment on the furniture. On my job. On whether you got into a real college.”
“I did get into a real college.”
“Doesn’t matter. She’ll find something.”
Lucas leaned against the counter and crossed his arms. “Then why do we keep inviting her?”
“You know what she’s going to say,”
“Because she’s the only close family we have left besides each other.” The words came out heavier than I meant them to. “And Mom would’ve wanted us to try.”
He didn’t answer right away.
He just watched me with an expression I couldn’t quite read, like he was weighing something he wasn’t ready to say.
“You know you did a good job, right?” he finally said. “Raising me.”
“She’s the only close family we have left.”
I laughed, but it came out wrong, cracked at the edges.
“I did an okay job.”
“No,” he said. “You did a good job. Don’t let her tell you different.”
I turned away so he wouldn’t see my eyes fill.
“Grab your backpack,” I said. “You’ll be late too.”
He disappeared down the hall, and I stood there in the quiet kitchen, breathing in the strange peace of a life I had somehow managed to build.
I didn’t know then that he’d been keeping something from me for months.
“You did a good job.”
I thought we had finally found stability.
But our aunt arrived for his birthday dinner with a completely different plan for our future.
The doorbell rang just as I finished lighting the candles on the cake.
Lucas glanced at me from across the room, his jaw tightening in a way I had learned to recognize over the years.
We both knew who it was before I even opened the door.
I thought we had finally found stability.
