I stayed with Spencer for a while longer.<\/p>\n
We talked about ordinary things.<\/p>\n
He asked whether I had eaten breakfast.<\/p>\n
I told him I had.<\/p>\n
He asked whether the drive had been difficult.<\/p>\n
I said the traffic wasn't too bad.<\/p>\n
Our conversation moved along in small, familiar pieces, and anyone watching us might have thought there was nothing wrong.<\/p>\n
That was what unsettled me most.<\/p>\n
I had heard him say something cruel.<\/p>\n
Yet he could still look at me with the same expression he had worn for years.<\/p>\n
I could still answer his questions.<\/p>\n
I could still worry about whether he was comfortable.<\/p>\n
I could still find myself wanting to reach over and straighten the blanket near his feet.<\/p>\n
Love didn't disappear when trust was damaged.<\/p>\n
Sometimes it stayed right where it was, making the damage harder to face.<\/p>\n
I looked at the bedside table.<\/p>\n
His phone rested beside a few personal items.<\/p>\n
I remembered hearing the other woman's voice through the speaker.<\/p>\n
I wondered whether Spencer would call her again after I left.<\/p>\n
I wondered whether he would tell her I had visited.<\/p>\n
I wondered what he would say if she asked whether I had brought him anything.<\/p>\n
I had no way to know.<\/p>\n
And I couldn't build a whole story around questions I hadn't answered.<\/p>\n
That was something I had to remind myself.<\/p>\n
I knew what I had heard.<\/p>\n
I didn't know everything else.<\/p>\n
For months, I had treated my son's worries as instructions.<\/p>\n
If he was concerned about an expense, I tried to find the money.<\/p>\n
If he said something wasn't working, I looked for another solution.<\/p>\n
If he sounded frightened, I did whatever I could to reassure him.<\/p>\n
I had rarely stopped to ask what he expected me to do.<\/p>\n
I had simply assumed that helping was the right response.<\/p>\n
Maybe that assumption had begun long before he became sick.<\/p>\n
Maybe I had taught him, without meaning to, that my first answer would always be yes.<\/p>\n
I couldn't blame him for every decision he made.<\/p>\n
He was responsible for the things he said and the choices he made.<\/p>\n
But I was responsible for the way I had allowed fear to guide my own decisions.<\/p>\n
I had given until I was frightened to look at my bank balance.<\/p>\n
I had borrowed money without knowing how I would repay it.<\/p>\n
I had sold things that mattered to me because I believed there was no other choice.<\/p>\n
And every time I did those things, I told myself that a good mother would do the same.<\/p>\n
Looking back, that belief makes me uncomfortable.<\/p>\n
A mother can love her child without destroying every part of her own life.<\/p>\n
I understood that in theory.<\/p>\n
I had never learned how to live as though it were true.<\/p>\n
Spencer moved his pillow and settled back against the bed.<\/p>\n
I watched him carefully.<\/p>\n
I wanted to know whether he was truly feeling worse.<\/p>\n
I wanted to know whether the problems he had described to me were as serious as I had believed.<\/p>\n
I wanted to understand what was happening to him.<\/p>\n
But I didn't have answers, and I couldn't find them by staring at his face.<\/p>\n
"Have you spoken to the doctors today?" I asked.<\/p>\n
"Not yet."<\/p>\n
"Do you know when they'll come by?"<\/p>\n
He shook his head.<\/p>\n
"Probably later."<\/p>\n
I nodded.<\/p>\n
The answers were brief.<\/p>\n
I didn't press him.<\/p>\n
I was afraid that if I asked too many questions, he would notice that something had changed.<\/p>\n
Then I wondered why I was afraid of that.<\/p>\n
If I was his mother, shouldn't I be able to ask how he was doing?<\/p>\n
Shouldn't I be able to talk about the medical bills without feeling that I was stepping into dangerous territory?<\/p>\n
Shouldn't I be able to say that I was worried, too?<\/p>\n
I had become so accustomed to being the steady one that I had forgotten I was allowed to have doubts.<\/p>\n
I glanced at the clock.<\/p>\n
I had been there longer than I realized.<\/p>\n
"I should let you rest," I said.<\/p>\n
Spencer looked at me.<\/p>\n
"You don't have to leave yet."<\/p>\n
The words were simple.<\/p>\n
They might have been an honest request for company.<\/p>\n
They might have meant nothing more than that he didn't want to be alone.<\/p>\n
I couldn't know.<\/p>\n
I stayed seated for another moment.<\/p>\n
Then I asked myself a question I had avoided for months.<\/p>\n
If I stayed, would I be staying because I wanted to spend time with my son?<\/p>\n
Or would I be staying because I was afraid that leaving might make him think I didn't care?<\/p>\n
I didn't like the answer that came to mind.<\/p>\n
I had spent so long trying to prove that I would never abandon him that I had begun to treat every ordinary decision as a test of my love.<\/p>\n
I couldn't keep doing that.<\/p>\n
Not if I wanted to understand what was happening between us.<\/p>\n
"I'm going to take care of a few things," I told him. "I'll check on you again."<\/p>\n
He nodded.<\/p>\n
"All right."<\/p>\n
I stood and reached for my handbag.<\/p>\n
The envelope inside it remained untouched.<\/p>\n
I hadn't told him about the lottery ticket.<\/p>\n
I hadn't told him that I could pay the bills.<\/p>\n
I hadn't promised to give him anything.<\/p>\n
For once, I was leaving a conversation without making a financial decision.<\/p>\n
The feeling was strange.<\/p>\n
It was not relief exactly.<\/p>\n
It was more like standing at the edge of a familiar road and realizing that I had never considered taking another path.<\/p>\n
I leaned forward and kissed his forehead.<\/p>\n
He closed his eyes briefly.<\/p>\n
That small gesture nearly undid me.<\/p>\n
For a moment, I saw the boy he had once been.<\/p>\n
I remembered how naturally I had reached for him when he needed comfort.<\/p>\n
I remembered how easy it had been to believe that love meant giving him whatever protection I could.<\/p>\n
I wanted to believe that the same tenderness still connected us.<\/p>\n
Perhaps it did.<\/p>\n
But tenderness alone couldn't answer the questions I now carried.<\/p>\n
I straightened.<\/p>\n
"Get some rest," I said.<\/p>\n
"I will."<\/p>\n
I walked to the door.<\/p>\n
My hand rested on the handle for a moment before I opened it.<\/p>\n
I wanted to turn around and tell him about the ticket.<\/p>\n
I wanted to watch his face brighten.<\/p>\n
I wanted to hear him say that I didn't have to worry anymore.<\/p>\n
But I couldn't make myself do it.<\/p>\n
Not yet.<\/p>\n
I stepped into the hallway and closed the door behind me.<\/p>\n
The sound was soft.<\/p>\n
Still, I stood there for a moment, looking at the same pale wall I had stared at before entering the room.<\/p>\n
Nothing outside had changed.<\/p>\n
The hospital continued moving around me.<\/p>\n
A nurse walked past with a chart.<\/p>\n
Someone called for assistance farther down the corridor.<\/p>\n
A telephone rang at the nurses' station.<\/p>\n
I held my handbag close to my side and began walking toward the exit.<\/p>\n
I didn't know what the right decision would be.<\/p>\n
I didn't know whether Spencer understood how deeply his words had hurt me.<\/p>\n
I didn't know whether he would ask for more money the next time we spoke.<\/p>\n
And I didn't know whether the winning ticket would bring us closer together or expose a distance that had been growing for longer than I wanted to admit.<\/p>\n
But I knew one thing.<\/p>\n
I couldn't spend twenty million dollars trying to buy back the certainty I had felt before hearing that conversation.<\/p>\n
Money could pay bills.<\/p>\n
It could make treatment easier to afford.<\/p>\n
It could remove debts that had kept me awake at night.<\/p>\n
But it couldn't tell me whether my son was being honest with me.<\/p>\n
Only the truth could do that.<\/p>\n
I reached the hospital entrance and stopped beside the glass doors.<\/p>\n
For months, I had believed my only job was to find a way to keep Spencer from suffering.<\/p>\n
Now I understood that I had another responsibility.<\/p>\n
I had to stop pretending that my own suffering didn't matter.<\/p>\n
I stepped outside into the morning air.<\/p>\n
My handbag rested against my hip, the lottery ticket safely tucked inside.<\/p>\n
I had arrived that day ready to give my son everything.<\/p>\n
I left knowing that I needed to understand what giving everything would really mean.<\/p>\n
And for the first time, I decided that I would not make that choice out of fear.<\/p>\n
I stayed with Spencer for a while longer. We talked about ordinary things. He asked whether I had eaten breakfast. I told him I had. He asked whether the drive … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":40942,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-insightdrama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40947"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40947\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40967,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40947\/revisions\/40967"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/40942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}