If only it felt like it was for the best.

It’s another of my fewer and fewer nights in. I’ve checked the curtains as surreptitiously as I could, waiting for Sig to leave. Even though he can’t see in, at least not very well and not at all in the bedrooms, I don’t ever dare make a move to finish my nightly duties until he is gone. So, as soon as I hear his engine rumble to life and fade down the street, I jump up to start gathering supplies.

This is the only part that I really don’t like. In the evenings, when I’m home, I’m always afraid that Sig will show up at my door, asking to come in. What can I possibly say? No? But if I let him in…

No, that just can’t happen.

I push the thought far from my mind. I don’t need to borrow trouble. I’m surrounded by enough hurdles without dreaming up more.

I exhale the breath I’ve been holding practically the whole day, as I do every day that I don’t have dinner plans with Lance, and I head for the back bedroom. Gently, I open the door and flick on the overhead light.

Some days, days when I’ve been with Lance too much (and, again, been with Sig too little), this is my favorite part. Even though the roles have reversed and I’m now the caregiver, being with my mother, no matter how one-sided our time spent is, reminds me of better days. Long, long ago. It’s some variation of that “better” that I’m now fighting mercilessly to regain. For Travis’s sake.

“Momma, it’s supper time,” I tell her softly as I walk in. “After that, I’ll give you a bath.”

I get no response as I cart in her dinner tray and bath pan, nothing except the same odd gurgling I’ve heard for years. My mother has no idea that she’s in the world, but I tend her like she does. I worry that there might come a day when I won’t be able to do this, when I’ll have to turn her care over to someone else. I try not to think about it. It makes me feel both incredibly sad and guilty. Despite the way things were when she was “alive,” I love her and I don’t want to lose her. And it would kill Travis. But at the same time, she is an enormous responsibility, both her presence and the circumstances surrounding it, that I sometimes feel I can’t carry. The weight is unbearable. But then there are other times when being with her is soothing, comforting somehow, even though she never says a word.

I hit the button that raises the head of her bed, the expensive adjustable memory foam bed that Lance thought he was buying for me. I spread a napkin across her thin chest before I perch beside her, plate in hand. My mother’s eyes, the same green that all her children inherited, stare blankly at the wall opposite her as I spoon mashed potatoes into her open mouth. She smacks her trembling lips and then swallows clumsily. I wipe gravy off her chin before I give her a second bite.

“Travis went to Trip’s again tonight,” I tell her with a concerned sigh. She grunts. Or moans. I’m not sure which. And I don’t know what it means, or if it means anything at all. She does it at random times. “I worry about him when he’s over there. He says they’re just playing video games, but with Trip...”

I give my mother another bite of dinner and then I hold a straw to her lips. “Take a drink, momma.” I tickle her lower lip with the straw and she finally latches on, sucking thirstily.

I feel another pang of guilt. With a shadow following me everywhere I go now, I can’t come home as easily to check on her throughout the day. Since it looks like Sig isn’t going anywhere, in the future, I’ll have to think of excuses to stop by my house for a few minutes here and there.

She grunts again, pushing the straw out of her mouth with her tongue. I smile down into her familiar yet oddly blank face. “I guess that means you’re ready for some more food, huh, Momma?”

After my mother is finished eating, I set about giving her a bath before I brush her teeth and change her bed. As I smooth lotion on her skin, I check for red spots that might indicate bed sores. It’s a constant worry with her lying in bed all the time, but at least she can shift around a little bit by herself. Enough to keep her skin from breaking down, obviously.

When I do to slip a fresh gown down over her head, she holds her arms up like a small child might. The action is small yet poignant, and a well-hidden part of me cries on the inside for all the losses that my family has suffered over the years. Before closing my mind to it, I let the pain rocket through me, tearing away little bits and pieces of scar tissue. It’s a painful reminder, but a reminder nonetheless. And reminders can be good tools in keeping me focused.

Before the tears welling in my eyes can fall, I think of Travis and my insides quiet. He has to be my first priority. Everything I do, I do for him. And one day, it will all work out like I’ve planned. And then it’ll be worth it. All this will be worth it. Until then, I suck it up and press on. It’s the only choice I have.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN- SIG

It’s dark out so I cut across one street and two yards to end up at the back of Tommi’s little house. It’s getting harder and harder to leave her. Whether at night or dropping her off with Lance for the day, I’m getting greedy. I want to spend time with her. I want to get to know her, the real her. The her that smiles with her eyes, the her that watches me from her rearview mirror, the her that looks at me with longing when she thinks I can’t see.

I’ve wondered so many nights what she does when she’s home alone, after her brother leaves. It’s always shortly after that when she’ll bring me a plate for supper or a tin of cookies or some other kind of treat and wish me a goodnight, basically dismissing me for the day. Like a good employee, I go on back to my new “home” and pretend that my duty for the day is over, until the next morning when I wake up to do it all over again.

But not this time. Not tonight. I want to know how she fills her time, what she has in her life besides Lance and her brother.

It’s quiet and I can see that there’s a light on in the kitchen. The only other light is in what appears to be a bedroom. The curtains are closed, but I can see shadows shifting inside. Probably Tommi, judging by the height and build, and the fluid way she moves.

I watch her flit here and there, bending and straightening, reaching for things and turning back. I have no idea what she’s doing, so with a glance left and right, I step closer to the window and peek through the sliver-like part in the curtain.

It is Tommi, as I suspected. I can see her ringing out a washcloth and then turning to her left. I see her shoulders work and when she leans back into the scope of the crack, I can see her mouth moving, too. She’s talking to someone, but I don’t know who. I listen closely. I can hear the sexy timber of her voice, but just a rumble. Not clearly enough to make out words. And that’s the only sound I hear.