He lets go and kneels in front of me. “I expect you to be at every game, Mouse.” His voice cracking has my heart doing the same, a big split right down the middle. “Best friends support each other. They’re there for each other.”
The smile I grace him with is genuine. “I promise I’ll be at every single one.”
He wets his lips and nods once before standing, stepping back into Cam’s hold. Mama smiles down at me, Grandma brushes my hair behind my ear, and Dad offers me a single head bob like Kaiden.
It seems so final. Yet not final at all.
A beginning.
Kaiden will go to college.
Dad and Cam may have a child.
Mama could be happy. Date. Get remarried. Have more children.
There’s nothing that would hold them back. No excuse or emergency would cause them from living their lives, and the thought calms me completely until my body sinks lazily into the chair that Mama pushes.
Mama wheels me back to my room, greeting the nurses that say hello and ask if we need anything.
Mama. That’s all I need.
Once the nurses are done checking my vitals and it’s just Mama and me, she tells me about the friends she’s making. The understanding she’s accepting about how it all went wrong…and in many ways right.
“I’m sorry, Emery,” she whispers, stroking my hand with her thumb.
Sorry for shutting down.
Sorry for abandoning me.
Sorry for not realizing it sooner…
“It’s okay,” I tell her honestly.
Mama brought me to Dad. To Cam. To Kaiden. Her understanding that she couldn’t take care of me the way I needed brought back my father and more family that I had no clue I needed. She gave me a best friend when I lost the only one I ever knew, and an innocent love that I would have never felt otherwise.
I love Kaiden.
Like a friend. My best friend.
Like family.
I move over and slowly pat the empty spot beside me. “You gave me so much, Mama. We can’t change what’s happened and I don’t want to. Everything happens for a reason, right?”
She swallows. “Yeah, Sunshine. It does.”
Mama curls up in bed beside me, wrapping her arms around my body, careful not to tug on the wires and tubes. Her face is wet, matching my own damp cheeks. Her head rests on the same pillow mine does.
Sometimes words aren’t enough.
Sometimes nothing has to be said at all.
Mama opens her lips…and starts singing.
You are my sunshine, my only sunshine,
You make me happy, when skies are gray.
You’ll never know, dear, how much I love you…