19 #4
“No, you need to hear it. You are not your father. You are not the girls’ father.
You are their brother. You are my son. As much as I love how you show up for us, as much as I know your dad would be proud of the man you are trying to be, you have been carrying too much that was never yours to carry. ”
My throat closed.
“I have Vivi,” she said. “I have Skylar. I have the bills. I have the house. Maybe I’m tired. Maybe it’s hard. Maybe I cry in the laundry room sometimes because the dryer makes a sound your father used to fix and I hate calling someone else. But I have it, Easton.”
“You shouldn’t have to.”
“No, I shouldn’t. Neither should you.”
I pressed the phone harder against my ear.
“You send money home and act like breathing is selfish,” she said.
“You work until your body is held together by tape and stubbornness. You take every problem in this family and shove it onto your back like if you bend low enough, the girls won’t notice the weight.
They notice. I notice. And I love you more than I love what you can provide. ”
My breathing went uneven. “I don’t know how to put it down.”
“I know.”
That hurt worse than if she had told me to try harder.
“I think Aura was the only place I ever put it down,” I said, the words escaping before I could decide whether they were too much. “And then she made me feel stupid for needing that.”
My mother was quiet long enough for the rain to fill the line.
“Then tell her that,” she said. “Not as a weapon. As the truth.”
I nodded even though she couldn’t see me.
“And Easton?”
“Yeah?”
“Do not make that girl beg for a door you already unlocked.”
The room went quiet.
I could hear my own heart. I could hear my mother breathing. I could hear the ugly click of everything inside me trying to rearrange around something I had been too angry to look at.
Maybe forgiveness wasn’t the door.
Maybe acceptance was.
Maybe I had been standing on one side of it, my fist bleeding against the frame, calling it locked because opening it meant stepping into a room where Aura’s pain and mine both had to exist without one erasing the other.
“What if she doesn’t want me now?” I asked.
“Oh, honey.” Her voice softened. “Then you survive it.”
I closed my eyes.
“But if she does,” Mom said, “do not make fear sound like pride and call that strength.”
The words stayed. They lodged somewhere beneath the bruises.
“I love you,” I said, and my voice barely worked.
“I love you more than your ability to fix things,” she said. “Remember that.”
“I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“You’ll call me after you eat actual food.”
“Mom.”
“I am still mothering.”
I huffed out a tired laugh. “Fine.”
“And Easton?”
“Yeah?”
“Get your shit together before you lose the good parts of yourself trying to punish the broken ones.”
I stared at the rain. “Yeah. I heard you.”
We hung up a minute later, after she asked about my hand twice, my ribs three times, and whether Ryan had fed me like she had somehow sensed him through the universe.
I told her yes because he had shoved a breakfast sandwich into my bag after practice and threatened to call her himself if I didn’t eat it.
For a while, I sat there with the phone in my hand and the apartment around me looking exactly the same. Nothing had moved. The coffee table was still crooked. The rain still struck the window. The couch still sagged in the middle. My hand still throbbed. My ribs still burned.
But the spiral had a name now.
Acceptance.
Not excusing it. Not erasing it. Not making what happened clean. Accepting that the ugly thing was real and deciding what came next.
I didn’t go to Aura’s apartment that night, and it was the first decent choice I made.
I wanted to.
Holy fuck, I wanted to.
I wanted to walk through the rain, pound on her door, and say everything before courage could sour back into pride. I wanted to see her face and know whether she had cried herself empty or armored herself back into something sharp enough to survive me.
But showing up raw would have been another version of taking, so I sat in the mess.
I ate half the breakfast sandwich cold over the sink because my mother had terrifying range and Ryan had absolutely told her what I ate.
I rewrapped my hand because Cade’s medical supplies sat on my counter like judgment with adhesive.
I took two pain relievers, pressed a bag of frozen peas against my ribs, and watched a Red Wings replay without registering a single play.
The next day, I skated until my legs shook.
The day after that, I worked a shift at North Cut Rink, sharpening skates for kids who still looked at hockey like it was magic instead of a place men hid from their own heads.
For the days that followed, I learned what silence felt like when I didn’t use it as a weapon.
It was ugly.
It was loud.
It was full of her.
By the time I stood outside the ABC apartment at eleven at night with rain dripping from my hair and a KFU Fury hoodie plastered against my skin, I still didn’t know whether I had the right words.
I only knew I was done letting the wrong ones speak for me.