Chapter 6: Clear
Weeks settled into a pattern that did not require my parents’ approval.
I worked. I slept through most nights. I cooked food that did not come from a delivery bag designed for hands too weak to open cans. On a Thursday I walked a trail with Mara and did not check my phone until we reached the car. Dad’s name appeared once more in a missed-call log; I did not return it. Mom sent a letter on paper, the kind that tries to borrow gravity from the stamp. I read it, placed it in a folder with old bills marked paid, and did not draft a reply that would re-open negotiations.
They had chosen a wedding cake when the oncologist said stage three. They had sent a registry link and a caption about everyone who truly mattered. They had been busy when the basin and the hair and the shaking hands required a person in the room. I had learned their language fluently enough to speak it back without shaking.
May you like
Care existed in the world for them the same way it had existed for me—through systems, through payment, through people who showed up because it was their work. I had built part of that system while abandoned by the people now requesting an exception. The exception was not available.
I was cancer-free. I was busy. And the four words still stood exactly where I had left them.
