The little burn mark beside the stove from Harrison’s first attempt to cook pancakes when he was twelve.
“The house wasn’t too much for me,” I said.
“You were.”
Sloan’s face changed.
Harrison whispered, “Mom.”
I closed my folder.
“You both have thirty days to move out.”
For a moment, they seemed unable to understand the sentence.
Sloan recovered first.
“You can’t be serious.”
“I am.”
“We’re family.”
“You remembered that quickly.”
“You would throw your own son onto the street over a cake?”
There it was.
The cake.
As if the last year could be compressed into lemon crumbs on a patio.
As if the cake had emptied my retirement account.
As if the cake had taken over my bathroom, expected my labor, mocked me in front of my friends, and placed financial paperwork beside my breakfast.
“No,” I said.
“The cake was just the first thing I stopped pretending not to see.”
Harrison sat down heavily at the table.
Sloan stayed standing.
“Where exactly are we supposed to go?”
“You’re both adults.”
“Rent is insane.”
“Then perhaps a $2,500 purse wasn’t the best investment.”
Her eyes flashed.
For one terrible second, I thought she might throw something.
Instead, she grabbed her folder and left the kitchen.
Harrison remained.
I poured another cup of coffee.
“Mom,” he said quietly, “I know we messed up.”
I waited.
“But thirty days?”
“You said a few months when you moved in.
It’s been a year.”
“We need time.”
“You had time.”
He rubbed his hands together.
“Sloan’s going to blame me for this.”
That sentence stunned me.
Not because it was cruel.
Because even then, his greatest fear was Sloan’s reaction.
Not what he had done to me.
I sat across from him.
“Harrison, look at me.”
He did.
For a moment I saw the little boy who once ran into my bedroom after nightmares.
The teenager who called me when his first girlfriend broke his heart.
The young man Robert hugged on his wedding day.
I loved him.
That had never been the problem.
“You had access to that account because I trusted you if I became sick,” I said.
“You spent nearly eighteen thousand dollars.”
His eyes filled, but he did not deny it.
