“Sozinho?” She frowns.
“Yes. Alone.” I don’t know why she acts disappointed or heartbroken that I do things alone. I’m twenty-seven and despite the fact that I have more siblings than I can count on one hand and I’ve lived in enough states to have accumulated hundreds of friends and associates over the years, I’ve always preferred to go about things my own way—by myself.
Life’s a hell of a lot less disappointing that way.
“I’m so glad you’re home, Isaiah.” She offers a pained smile, reaching for my hands. She places them between hers, her palms warm but her fingers like ice. “Please tell me you’ll be staying a while?”
“I leave next week,” I remind her. “In nine days, actually.”
My mother shakes her head. “I don’t know why you keep going back there, Isaiah. It’s a blessed miracle that you make it home each time, but one of these days it’s going to be in a box in the belly of an airplane.”
She makes the sign of the cross, mouthing a short Catholic prayer under her breath.
I pinch the bridge of my nose before resting my elbows on my knees. I can’t look at her right now, not when her dark eyes are getting glassier by the second. I hate seeing her in pain, and I especially hate seeing her in pain because of me.
“This is my job,” I say, knowing full well it won’t make any of this easier for her. “My career.”
“Couldn’t you have been anything else?” she asks. “What about something with computers? Or fixing cars? Or building things? You were always so good with your hands.”
“Still am,” I say.
“Remind me, when can you retire?” she asks.
“You know I re-enlisted last year.” I exhale, steadying my patience. We’ve been through this a hundred times, but I shouldn’t get frustrated. Her medications fog her memory.
Ma clucks her tongue. “I always thought you and your sisters would open a restaurant someday.”
“Yeah, well, they went ahead and did that without me, but that’s all right. You’ve tried my cooking before.” I smirk, thinking about the time I made the family tacos but forgot the seasoning. For years they refused to let me live that down. I never stepped foot inside the kitchen again after that. “I brought you some dinner. You hungry?”
Rising, I head to the kitchen, grabbing the hearts of palm salad I ordered from her favorite Brazilian steakhouse down the street as well as a bottle of water, her evening meds, and a tin TV tray.
When I return to her room, she’s situated in her corner chair, flicking through TV stations on the thirty-inch TV perched on top of her hand-me-down dresser. After a minute, she settles on Jeopardy, and then her eyes flicker. Ma struggles to stay awake but she fights through it.
“Thank you, meu amor,” she says when I situate her dinner before her. Lifting her hand to my face once more, she smiles. “You’re so good to me, Isaiah. I don’t deserve you.”
“Ma, don’t say that. You deserve tudo. You deserve everything.”
Once upon a time she was a vibrant woman who couldn’t sit still for more than two minutes and taught her American-born children every Brazilian lullaby she could remember. With a contagious laugh, long dark hair down her back, and a wardrobe full of bright, happy colors, Alba Torres was the loudest person in the room, literally and figuratively. Her enthusiasm for life was nothing short of infectious and her five-foot two frame could barely contain her enormous personality.
And then she got sick.
But someone’s got to take care of her, and it sure as hell hasn’t been my siblings. They only do shit when they have to—which is when I’m gone.
I’ll admit my oldest sister, Calista, tends to carry the brunt of the load in my absence, but she’s also raising four kids while her husband works two jobs, so I tend to cut her some slack.
“What are you doing the rest of the week?” she asks. “Anything special?”
I shrug. I’ll mostly be biding my time. “A little of this. A little of that.”
Ma rolls her eyes, returning her sleepy gaze to Alex Trebek. “Always so secretive, my Isaiah.”
“No secrets here. Just trying to stay busy.”
“With women and booze?” she asks, lifting a dark brow.
“Is that what you think I do in my spare time?” I pretend to be offended, though we both know she isn’t wrong. I had every intention of hitting up the sports bar down the street tonight … tomorrow night … and the next.
Maybe even the night after that.
That’s the beauty of being a lone wolf. Your life is one-hundred percent yours and you can do whatever the hell you damn well please.
“I’d like to think you’re volunteering at a homeless shelter or cleaning up litter on the highway, but I know you.” She reaches for a fork before glancing at her salad. “Maybe one of these days you’ll meet someone nice and then you’ll finally stop playing around and wasting the best years of your life on strangers who don’t deserve you.”