Page 2 of Biker's Tribute: Property of Bear

“Yes.”

“I’m serious, Ethan. You need a wife.”

“I’ve made it this far.”

“I could set you up with someone.”

“No.”

“Have you considered that you care too much about gambling?”

My mother is out of her fucking mind. Gambling takes the edge off. It makes it easy to keep track of the other shit I have to do. Playingmotivates me.Mom wouldn’t understand. She blames video poker for some big fucked up thing dad did in the 90’s that she mentions without mentioning. She doesn’t have a problem with card games or dice games that happen in person, but she doesn’t trust the machines.

I’m the opposite. I only trust machines. People are unpredictable.

“Mom. Can we just drink and have a nice time?”

Her body tenses. I sense that she’s holding something back from me, but if she doesn’t want to tell me what it is, I can't drag it out of her. But my mother sighs and then she touches her neck, which she always did when she was explaining a big credit card purchase to our father. I stare at her, with eyes that remind us both of the man we lost.

“Fine,” she says. “I want to go back to Boston.”

Her eyes are glassy. If this were Tylee, I would be suspicious that she stepped out on her husband and got pregnant or something. But it’s my mother – the most perfect woman on planet Earth.

“What? Why?”

Mom isn’t the type to leave the comforts of her Midwestern home. She finds people on the East Coast unfriendly, and she isn’t afraid to tell them that she thinks so. Despite her origins – on her mother’s side – mom has never had much of an affinity for Boston. She likes being close to Wyatt and Anna. She has precious grandchildren – and without all the drama that came with Kaylee-Marie, Owen’s first baby mama.

“I need to,” she says, the tears vanishing and her voice returning to that stoic, if not stern tone that I recognize from my childhood. Thereissomething wrong.

She’s drinking with her eldest son and pressuring me about marriage. This woman has never wanted to share my affections with anyone. She threw red wine on my prom date’s dress. I had to let it go eventually, but I didn’t talk to her for a month after that stunt.

I’m worried.

And it takes a lot to worry me. I’m nothing like Wyatt, who worries about whether the sky will be blue today, as if that has ever been up for change.

“Mom?” I ask her, using a voice that I hope will coax the truth out of her. I want to act like I can handle anything, even if I’m not sure I can.

My mother has made it a long practice of hiding her pain from her sons. That’s the part of her East Coast upbringing that she kept up all those years. She finally meets my gaze – after another hearty swig of wine.

“I can’t,” she says. The bottle clinks against the counter. I need to know.

“Mom. I can handle it. Just tell me what’s wrong.”

She sighs and those tears appear again just in the corners of her eyes.Fuck.This is serious.

Her voice warbles, “There’s a lump in my right breast, Ethan. And I don’t trust these hillbilly doctors. I was raised in Boston. That’s where I want to go.”

A lump.

“It’s probably nothing,” I tell her. But I know it isn’t nothing. Our grandmother in Boston was a Murray before she was a Hollingsworth – first cousin to the leader of an old Irish mob family. And she died. Of breast cancer.

“I know,” she says, returning to flip the steak.

The seasoning on the steak suddenly smells heavy. I feel like I drank the entire bottle of wine on my own, even if I’ve had far more whiskey. Internally, there’s nothing but pure panic. Outwardly, I know I have to keep my cool. Be the eldest brother. The one who takes care of mom.

“I’ll take you out there,” I tell her. “You can stay in the condo. I’ll get a place nearby.”

She looks up at me, her eyes still wide with concern.

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