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I texted my mother every evening.
She texted back in the brief way of someone who found texting effortful but who understood it as a form of care.
She texted: fine. Eating a little.
She texted: slept okay.
She texted: took the medication.
The texts were reassuring.
On the fourth day, the morning meeting ended at noon instead of four.
The client had another obligation.
My flight was booked for that evening.
I changed it.
I got on an earlier flight.
I did not tell Gabriel I was coming home early.
I intended to call him from the car.
I landed at seven in the evening.
I drove home.
I was thinking about my mother and about whether I should make the ginger tea and whether there was enough broth.
I pulled into the driveway.
I noticed a second car that I recognized as belonging to Gabriel’s brother Danny.
I thought: oh. Danny came over.
I did not think anything else yet.
I came in through the garage.
The kitchen was the first thing.
The kitchen was not the kitchen I had left.
There were bottles on the counter.
Beer bottles, the empty kind, the kind that have been there long enough to suggest they were from earlier and not from right now.
There was a bag of chips that had been opened and most of its contents consumed.
There was a pizza box.
The pizza box was open and contained the remains of a pizza that had been eaten over its surface, crust pieces and grease pooling in the cardboard.
The carpet in the hallway had a stain.
Not a new stain, the kind that had been there for a few days and not been addressed.
I put my bag down.
The sound from the guest room was the television.
I stood in the hallway.
I heard football.
I heard Gabriel’s voice and Danny’s voice in the easy way of two men who have been in a comfortable place for a while.
I opened the door to the guest room.
The guest room.
The room with the window that looked onto the backyard.
The room across from the bathroom.
The room I had told my mother was her room.
Gabriel was on the bed.
Danny was on the chair that I had moved in so my mother could sit by the window.
They had the television.