His face tightened. “Mom, come on.”
I touched his arm. He was taller than me, broader, middle-aged in ways I kept forgetting until the light caught the lines near his eyes. For a second, I saw the boy who used to come into my room after nightmares and stand silently beside the bed until I woke. I loved that boy. I loved this man too. That was the awful part. Love did not disappear just because respect had.
“Julian,” I said, “you’re forty-one.”
He flinched as if the number was a slap.
“You have a good job. Brooke has clients. You both drive better cars than I ever did. You eat well. You travel. You are not helpless.”
“I never said I was helpless.”
“No,” I said. “You just keep behaving as if I’m responsible for proving it.”
He swallowed. For once, Brooke was not there to answer for him. The hallway felt narrow and warm. He looked toward the stairs, then back at me.
“Things have just been stressful.”
“For whom?”
He didn’t answer.
I let my hand fall from his arm. “That’s what I thought.”
That night, I heard them arguing upstairs. Not screaming. Julian and Brooke did not scream when they knew I could hear. Brooke’s voice was low and fast, Julian’s slower, defensive. The floorboards carried fragments.
“She’s doing this on purpose.”
“She’s allowed to—”
“Allowed? Julian, she’s punishing us.”
“She’s my mom.”
“Then act like her son.”
A door closed. Not slammed. Brooke had more control than that. She understood performance. Even anger had to look acceptable from the outside.
The following Monday, she appeared in the kitchen almost glowing.
I knew that glow. It meant she had found a way to reestablish the world in her favor.
She sat at the island with her laptop open, a planner beside her, and Cynthia on speakerphone. Julian stood near the fridge eating toast over the sink because the paper plates had finally run out and nobody had unloaded the dishwasher. Brooke had pinned her hair back and wore a soft beige sweater that matched the house better than any of us did.
“Mom,” she said brightly into the phone, “I’m telling you, the garden will be perfect. We’ll do the long table under the string lights, and I’ll have the caterer set up in the kitchen.”
I poured tea.
Brooke glanced at me, then made her voice a little louder. “Yes, Saturday. No, don’t worry about anything. We want to celebrate you properly.”
Julian stopped chewing.
I looked at him. He looked away.
Brooke ended the call and turned to me with the face of a woman about to ask for something she had already taken.
“So,” she said, “Cynthia’s birthday is Saturday.”
“How nice.”
“We’re doing a little gathering here.”
“A little gathering.”
“Just family and a few close friends.”