Chapter 6 - A House Is Not a Promise
I wanted to tell her that would never happen.
Instead, I asked, “What would make you feel safer?”
“I don’t know.”
“Okay.”
She looked surprised.
I had always treated uncertainty like a problem I could solve by talking louder.
This time, I sat down.
“You don’t have to decide tonight.”
The next morning, I called my manager.
“I need leave. My wife’s been hospitalized.”
He asked how long.
“I don’t know yet. I’ll send what I can hand off today.”
For the first time, I let someone at work be inconvenienced without offering my wife’s time to fix it.
I went home while Mia rested.
The kitchen smelled of old oil.
Two pans sat in the sink. A load of wet laundry had soured in the washer. Beside the sofa lay a notebook with feeding times written in Mia’s careful handwriting.
Some entries came less than an hour apart.
I had called her days quiet.
I stood in that room and understood how little I had ever looked.
I washed the dishes. Restarted the laundry. Changed the sheets.
Then I wrote down what needed doing every day.
Food. Bottles. Laundry. Groceries. Diapers. Cleaning. Appointments.
The list filled a page before I reached anything I did regularly.
At the hospital, I showed it to Mia.
“This isn’t a schedule for you,” I said. “It’s what I should have been noticing.”
She read it without smiling.
“Who handles it when your leave ends?”
“I do my share before and after work. And we can pay for help if you want it.”
“With what money?”
“I’m checking the budget.”
“Don’t just promise things because you feel bad.”
“I won’t.”
That afternoon, she agreed to come home after she was cleared to leave.
At the front door, she stopped.
The house was clean.
Her expression didn’t change.
I had imagined relief.
She saw the same room where she had fallen.
“We can take a minute,” I said.
She nodded.
Then she asked for something I hadn’t considered.
“I want the lock changed.”
“Okay.”
“Your mom has a key.”
“I know.”
“And she thinks giving it back means you’ll give it to her again.”
“I’ll change it.”
While I fed Nico a bottle Mia had prepared, she checked her phone.
Her face tightened.
“What is it?”
She turned the screen toward me.
May you like
A message from Mom.
Enjoy this while it lasts. My son always comes back to me.
