As soon as he settled onto her bony frame, she seemed to come alive, just a little. Her arms wrapped around him and her breath hitched in her throat. Her smile returned, stretched tighter this time, like she was holding back tears and trying to turn them into something pretty.
Jason could feel it – the desperate effort. The performance of motherhood. The aching want to be 𝙜𝙤𝙤𝙙, if only for tonight.
“Oh look at you,” Catherine breathed, a trembling laugh rising in her throat. “You’re gettin’ so old. Eleven already?” Her voice lifted with something close to joy. And, for a moment, she wasn’t the hollowed-out woman who slept all day and disappeared at night. She wasn’t the brittle shadow he had watched shrink before his eyes over the years.
Mom, trying her best to hold on.
Jason didn’t speak right away. He could feel the fragility of the moment in her heartbeat. Like if he said the wrong thing, it would all collapse. But even then, the worry clawed at him. The guilt. The knowledge that this cake – this beautiful, too-perfect cake – wasn’t something they could afford.
He looked at the candle again, still flickering stubbornly on the table.
“We could still return it,” Jason insisted again softly, turning just enough to look at her. “Get somethin’ we need.”
