Chapter 22
Twenty-Two
Beckett
I find her where I always do.
My mother kneels on the damp grass, her hands sunk into the soil as she arranges flowers at the base of my father’s headstone.
Pink and white today. Roses and lilies. She’s particular about it, always has been.
Even now, she lines them up with the same care she used to give to Sunday dinners and pressed shirts.
I stop a few feet behind her and wait.
She doesn’t startle because she recognizes the sound of my footsteps.
“I thought I’d find you here,” I say.
The corner of her mouth curves as she looks up. After pressing the final stem into place, she brushes dirt from her palms, then sits back on her heels to study her work.
“I was going to call you,” she says. “But I knew you’d come eventually.”
I shove my hands into my pockets, step closer, and look down at the stone. His name still catches me every time. Familiar, but wrong.
“You didn’t have to come out alone,” I tell her.
She straightens with a small grunt, joints stiff in a way she pretends not to notice. “I wasn’t alone. He keeps me company.”
There’s no arguing with that.
When she’s finished, I offer my arm. She takes it, and we walk toward the bench beneath the oak tree. We’ve been doing this long enough that the rhythm feels practiced. I don’t know whether that’s comforting or unsettling, so I don’t dwell on it.
She lowers herself onto the bench with a sigh, smoothing her trousers before her hand comes to rest on my thigh. “You look tired.”
“I’m fine.”
She tips her head, eyes narrowing. It’s the look that’s been dismantling my lies since I was six.
I exhale. “Let me take you for lunch?”
A smile tugs at the corner of her mouth. “That would be nice.”
We sit for a moment, listening to the wind through the trees, before she asks, “Work still stealing you away?”
I don’t answer right away because answering would mean telling her about the nights that bleed into mornings, about how time fractures in the trauma bay, about how bodies are broken open, and about how I make decisions in seconds that echo for years.
It would mean telling her how exhaustion settles into my bones, how some faces follow me home, and how some screams never quite leave.
Hers most of all.
Instead, I shrug and let the truth sit between us without giving it a name.
Work is blood under my nails and coffee gone cold.
It’s doing everything right and still losing people.
It’s doing everything wrong and saving them anyway.
It’s walking a line so thin it cuts.
“More like I let it,” I say eventually.
She hums. “I remember when you were little, you never wanted to nap, not even when you needed it.”
A laugh slips out of me. “I wish I still had the option to take a nap.”
Her mouth tilts. “Your father would be so proud of you.”
The words land exactly where they always do. Right in the chest.
“He always knew. Even when you were small. He used to tell anyone who’d listen, ‘My boy is going to be a doctor someday.’ He had to leave school early,” she continues. “He worked for everything we had. There were long hours, but no complaints. But he never doubted you. Not once.”
I swallow hard.
“I always knew medicine was in your future,” she adds. “You were steady even then.”
I don’t tell her about the nights I wake up sweating or the demons that haunt me. Some truths are mine to carry.
She turns then and really looks at me.
“So handsome,” she murmurs. “You look just like him.”
I shift, uncomfortable in a way I never quite grew out of. “It’s the hair.”
She reaches up and brushes imaginary lint from my shoulder. “No, it’s the eyes.”
I change the subject like I always do. “I’ll call by the house next week. See if you need anything fixed.”
She waves me off. “That’s okay. I’ve got someone popping in.”
“That so?” I glance at her. “Who?”
There’s a pause for just a beat too long.
“Tom,” she finally says. “He’s been helping out.”
That catches my attention.
Tom’s been mentioning the odd job here and there for months now.
I’d filed it away as friendly, the kind of thing he’s always done, but there’s a faint flush in my mother’s cheeks that wasn’t there a moment ago.
It climbs just high enough to make me wonder if I’m imagining it.
She adjusts the cuff of her sleeve, suddenly focused on nothing.
I watch her from the corner of my eye. “Didn’t realize he was around so much.”
“Oh, he just… pops in,” she replies. “Checks things. Makes sure I’m not climbing ladders I shouldn’t.”
A smile ghosts across her mouth. It’s different from her other smiles.
I’ve thought about this over the years. The idea of her not being alone.
Of someone else sitting at the kitchen table, reaching for her hand without thinking.
I never liked the thought much, but I understood it.
My father would hate knowing she was lonely.
He’d hate knowing she spent evenings with nothing but the TV and the ticking clock for company.
I always assumed that if it happened, it would be someone new, someone separate from us with clean edges.
Tom doesn’t fit that picture.
Honestly, if there were anyone else in her life, I’d be relieved.
Happy might be pushing it. I could pretend for her sake, but only until I convinced myself I wasn’t betraying my father. Then? Then I’d be happy.
“Come on,” she says, pushing herself to her feet. “Let’s get that lunch you promised.”
She leans into me and squeezes my arm when I stand.
As we walk back toward the car, I glance at the headstone one last time.
The guilt is still there.
It always is.