Chapter 31 Steven
Chapter thirty-one
Steven
The ranch was my least favorite place growing up. Waking up at dawn every morning to tend livestock and haul hay wasn’t what I pictured for myself. It never felt like my life. So when the chance to move to the city came, I didn’t hesitate to take it.
But after a year of being away at school, it became painfully clear how ungrateful I’d been for a home this beautiful.
Streaks of gold and blue glow as they stretch across the sky like a blanket settling over the pasture in slow motion.
The ground is still the murky-brown color of late winter, the kind that looks like all life has been drained from it.
Two lines of bare trees flank the field—an evident sign of the season’s end.
At first glance, it looks depressing, but the closer you look, you can see faint patches of green dotting the soil.
Little promises of life breaking through.
“I see you haven’t changed much.”
My sister, Jay, sidles up beside me at the front of the car. She doesn’t have to look at me to know exactly what I’m thinking.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I keep my eyes trained on the pasture, watching the cows graze.
“Every time you get here, you stand out front for nearly an hour, pondering God knows what, before finally coming inside.”
I glance at my watch. It’s only been five minutes since we got out of the car but still long enough for her point to land.
“Sorry,” I mutter, turning to look at her.
She looks the same. The same green square glasses she’s worn since she was seventeen. Her hair is pin straight and chopped at her shoulders. She’s swallowed by her favorite University of Oklahoma hoodie, grungy and almost worn down to the threads.
“You’re alive,” she whispers.
This hits me in the sternum. It’s meant to be sarcastic, but I hear it, the tangle of emotion that comes from not seeing each other for who knows how long. And the very real possibility that I could’ve died a few weeks ago.
I laugh weakly and sling an arm around her shoulders. She squeezes me tighter than I expect. “I’m alive.”
“Now let me kill you for not being here for almost three years.”
My breath catches. Emma mentioned I’d avoided coming for a while, but she hadn’t said exactly how long. Three years. Three full years.
“It’s been three years?” I ask, ashamed and embarrassed.
She punches me in the ribs. Hard. “Sure has.”
“Jeez,” I wheeze as the air is knocked out of me. “I’m injured right now.”
“It’s your head; you’re fine.” She tugs me toward the house, gravel crunching beneath our feet as we climb the small hill. “We gotta hurry.”
“What’s the rush?” I ask as she pushes me inside, but she’s already heading up the stairs before I get an answer.
I freeze at the bottom step, a wave of ease washing over me at the sight of my parents’ house, familiar and unchanged.
The same warm beige walls, the same smell of pine cleaner and Dawn dish soap, the same coat rack with scratched-up legs.
A few new things catch my eye, though. Family photos, updated frames, a recliner near the back door I don’t remember. A life lived without me in it.
The photos lining the walls feel like a time capsule.
My sisters and their families, faces I don’t remember meeting, my parents frozen in moments I know by heart.
The shelf that holds the television is crowded with more frames, and one side is solely dedicated to the grandkids.
Baby pictures of Easton, Sawyer, and Josie are in the center, a photo of Emma cradling the boys in the hospital, one of me holding Josie on the porch.
My chest pinches at the sight, moments I’ve seen in our albums but still can’t remember.
On the other shelf, the one that catches the sunlight pouring in from the back door, sit the wedding photos.
My sisters and their husbands. Some with their second.
And on the bottom shelf, right in the center, is a photo of Emma and me.
She’s radiant in a white satin ball gown, her hair pinned high up on her head, wearing pearls identical to my mother’s.
We’re mid-dance. Our first dance? And we look so impossibly happy it makes the air in my lungs feel pressurized, like I’ve been punched from the inside.
I rub at the sharp pain settling behind my sternum, trying to ease it with no relief.
I stare at the photo so long it starts to blur, praying for some ounce of remembrance to burst through. But nothing comes. Again.
“Are you stalling?”
Emma’s playful voice feels far away, but when her hand slides over mine, her tone shifts. “What’s wrong?” She rubs at the hand I’ve wrapped so tightly around the shelf’s edge that it’s making my fingers tingle.
“I can’t remember it,” I grit out, eyes fixed on the photo.
She sighs. After a long moment, she takes the frame and flips it face-down. I blink at her, startled and a little hurt. But she smiles.
“You will.”
“How can—”
“Let’s go upstairs.” She cuts me off before I can unravel further. I want to argue, fight these feelings until I’m raw. This is probably our pattern, what’s led us to where we are. She avoids the discomfort, and I dwell on it, sinking into it like quicksand.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she says once we’re at the top of the stairs. “We can be sad about that”—she waves toward the hall of photos below us—“later. But right now is not the time.” Her eyes drift to the closed bedroom door at the end of the hall.
Mom’s room.
A flood of grief runs over me, and I feel it deep in my bones—the loss I’m about to face. The mom I remember was healthy. She was taking pottery classes, riding her horse three times a week. In my mind, she was just calling me a few weeks ago, asking how I felt about my pathology class.
We’ve always been close, in that quiet way you’re close with someone who rarely hugs, or shows affection mostly in handwritten notes instead of words. She was always stoic, intimidating. It made dating in high school…an experience. Every girl I brought home left terrified.
It makes me admire Emma even more, knowing she met Donna Jones and stuck around.
But imagining the woman I’ve always seen as unstoppable being anything less feels terrifying.
Knowing my mother is now a frail, confused shell of herself threatens to rip me open.
I think a part of me has been clinging to denial, avoiding asking Dad for details, skirting around the subject entirely.
Shame prickles hot under my skin, racing up my neck and settling thick in my throat.
I try to swallow it down, but it sticks.
“I’m sure this will be overwhelming,” Emma whispers, “but you have to try to stay calm.”
“Will she remember me?” My voice is barely audible.
Emma’s encouraging smile falters. “I don’t know. But I hope so.”
I nod, dragging the heel of my hand across my eyes as tears soak my palms. “Okay…” I breathe, “let’s go.”
The distance from the steps to the door isn’t nearly long enough.
It’s not enough time to prepare myself. Yet, here we are, stepping into my mother’s bedroom, looking exactly like it did when I was seventeen.
The pastel-pink curtains and floral quilt are still bright, with the oak vanity still taking up half of the wall.
And there’s Mom, snuggled up in her favorite robe, sitting in her favorite pinstripe chair, gazing out the window.
Emma nudges me into the room, and Mom snaps her attention to us. Her eyes are gray and far away, unrecognizable.
“Mom?” the word scrapes out of me.
She blinks at us, her eyes offering no recognition. I approach slowly and kneel beside her chair, keeping a painfully careful distance. The last thing I want to do is scare her.
Footsteps fall behind us, and Mom’s gaze flickers in that direction, a small smile tugging at her lips.
Dad’s musky cologne drifts into the room, but my eyes never leave Mom.
The creases around her eyes and mouth, the deep line between her brows…
all evidence of life I’ve missed. Her lips twitch, tugging at the smile wrinkles.
Something in my chest loosens at them, hoping she’s had more happy moments than sad, knowing she’s still smiling even when she’s lost.
“Donna?” Dad’s voice hovers outside the room. “It’s Steven.”
Mom’s eyes meet mine, searching and assessing, the same look she used to give me as a kid. The I know you’re hiding something, but I’m your mother, and I will figure it out look.
Then she gasps. Her hands fly to my cheeks, and a knowing grin pinches hers. “Steven, my boy.”
My arms are around her before I can stop myself. I’m a little boy again, weeping into her shoulder, knowing she’d take every ounce of pain out of my body if she could.
“Mom,” I choke.
“Shh. There, there. I’m right here.” Her frail hands pat my head, rub my back, smooth the tension from me in the way only she ever could.
I cry on her for a solid five minutes, and she never once pushes me away. When I finally peel back, the flesh around my eyes burns like it’s been scrubbed raw.
“Always so emotional,” Shayna, my oldest sister, says as she breezes into the room, dropping onto the bed. The metal frame creaks as she adjusts, propping her chin in her hands. “Hey, stranger.”
I gape at her. Shayna has never believed in subtlety. She just shrugs, completely unbothered by how her words land around someone with dementia.
“How you been, loca?” she teases.
I groan, but warmth sparks in my chest at the sound of her voice.
Shayna is a doctor too, internal medicine, meaning she’s busier than all of us combined.
But she still makes time for Mom’s birthday party every year.
Apparently, I can’t say the same for myself.
I shove the guilt aside for now, knowing it will claw at me if I dwell on it too long.
Worry about it later, Emma’s voice whispers through my thoughts. She and Dad must have slipped away downstairs during my meltdown.
“We gonna eat or what?” Shayna asks.