Chapter 128
Chapter 121: The With To Get Better
Sedona’s POV
“I’d like you to make sure Nick knows called,” I said. My voice was level. I’d learned level during the treatment, had learned it as a necessity, the way you learned to breathe through something rather than against it. “Please tell him I’m thinking of him and that I love him p>
“Of course,” she said, with the warmth intact.
“And Catherine.” I paused. “Thank you for being honest with me p>
She heard something in the way I said it, because there was a brief adjustment in the quality of the silence. Not long. Just the adjustment of someone who’d expected à different response.
“Of course,” she said again. “I just-I care about what happens to you. I want you to have accurate information p>
“I do,” I said. “Have accurate information p>
I ended the call.
I sat in my hospital bed with the phone still in my hand and the room around me.
I let the conversation sit. Didn’t push it away, didn’t rush to analyze it, just let it settle the way things settled when you stopped trying to manage where they landed.
Catherine was in Logan’s house.
She was answering the landline. She was talking about what she’d been doing for Nick with the specific familiarity of someone who’d established herself there, who’d moved from visitor to resident in the space I’d vacated. She’d been making sure he ate properly-her words.
She had told me that Logan’s looking was about appearances
She had told me this because if I believed it, I would stay away. IfI believed that what Logan experienced as remorse was social management, I would not take the call if he managed to reach me. And with me away, at a safe distance, Catherine would continue to be in that house with Nick.
I thought about the sentence she hadn’t finished.
*He barely mentions p>
He barely mentioned me because he was six and he was surrounded by adults who weren’t creating space for him to mention me, who were presenting themselves as replacements and calling the child’s adaptation beautiful.
He barely mentioned me because when you missed someone and no one around you reflected that missing back to you, you learned eventually to keep the missing somewhere private, somewhere safe.
The card. Colored paper and markers. He’d made it for me.
The Will To Get Better
Claim
He’d made it and he’d gave it to Logan and Logan had described it to Cameron, who had told me. The card existed. The making of it had happened. Whatever Catherine said about adjustment and resilience and thriving, there was a six-year-old in Chicago who had made his mother a card.
That was the thing was keeping.
I handed the phone back to the nurse when she appeared in the doorway.
“Thank you,” I said.
“Of course.” She took it without comment, which was correct.
I looked at the window, deep in thoughts. I was not going to call the house again.
Not because I believed what Catherine had said about Logan. Not because I’d given up on Nick-I hadn’t.
I was not going to call again because calling again from this position-sick, recovering, at a distance, with Catherine intercepting-was not how Nick deserved to be reached. He deserved more than a message passed through someone who had an interest in whether it arrived intact. He deserved me, actually, when there was enough of me to give him.
I was going to get better. I was going to get all the way better, the full remission that Frank had said was achievable. I was going to get that, and then I was going to find a way to my son that didn’t go through Catherine or Logan or anyone else who had an investment in the path.
I was going to find him myself.
That was the decision. Quiet, specific, made in a hospital room on a Tuesday morning without witnesses, with the particular finality of something that had been forming for a long time and had finally found its shape.
Not today. Not this week. But it was decided.
The morning went on. The nursing staff moved through their rounds. Somewhere in the city, the school day was underway, and a six-year-old was doing whatever six-year-olds did in school on Tuesday mornings, listening to his teacher speak about the daily activities, or thinking about something that wasn’t school.
Maybe thinking about his mother.
Maybe not.
I didn’t know. I couldn’t know from here. And not-knowing was something I was going to have to hold carefully rather than fill with Catherine’s version of events.
He’d made a card.
I held that.
When Dante arrived at ten with the usual food and the usual easy presence that had become one of the reliable textures of my days, he looked at me in the way he had of looking at things-and he set the food down and pulled the chair close before he said anything.
“You look like you’ve been somewhere difficult,” he said.
23
The Will To Get Better
+made a phone call,” I said.
“Good difficult or bad difficult p>
I considered the question seriously, because he’d asked it seriously. “Clarifying,” I said finally. “It was clarifying p>
Claim
He nodded, his head not inquiring more waiting for me to be comfortable to bring it up.. He opened the container and the smell of it reached me-ginger, warm broth, the particular combination he’d been refining for two weeks based on what worked and what didn’t on what kind of day.
“Eat,” he said. “Then tell me if you want to, or don’t tell me if you don’t p>
I ate.
I didn’t tell him. Not yet. I let the food do what food did-ground the moment, provide something physical and present and uncomplicated when the thing in my chest was complicated and needed somewhere to be while I figured out what to do with it.
But when I’d finished, and he’d taken the container and was sitting back in the chair with the ease of someone entirely comfortable in the space, I said:
“There’s a child in Chicago who made me a card p>
He looked at me.
“I’m going to get better,” I said. “All the way better. And then I’m going to find my way to him p>
Dante looked at me for a moment with the directness that I’d come to understand was just how he looked
at things-without decoration, without the performance of looking.
“All right,” he said.
Two words. No elaboration, no advice, no carefully constructed encouragement. Just: all right.
Which meant: I believe you. Which meant: I’m here. going to argue with.
I looked at the window.
Seattle held us, gray and constant.
The card existed, made of colored paper and markers by a six-year-old who’d wanted his mother to have
I was going to get well enough to receive it.
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Florence
A passionate storyteller who brings emotions to life through her words. When she’s not writing, she finds peace nurturing her garden.