Page 33 of Absolution

It’s me, in a hospital gown, exhausted, hair around my face. My arms are wrapped around a tiny bundle. I’m kissing his forehead.

The frame is silver. Along the top, in delicate lettering, are two small etched wings.

Duke.

My baby boy.

My mom must’ve taken it. That quiet moment after they gave him to me. The only moment I had. The only memory I’ve let myself forget just to survive.

My fingers trace the curve of the frame, over the little angel wings, down to the soft edge of the picture. My breath hitches once. “I let her down.”

“No.”

“You did not.”

Marianne and Cory say it at the same time.

“I did,” I whisper. “She was there for me, through everything. And the one moment, theonemoment she needed me, I wasn’t there.” Tears slide down my cheeks.

Marianne reaches for my hand. “Mom knew.”

I shake my head. “She asked me to come.”

“I know,” Marianne says gently. “Because you were her baby. Just like you had babies. But when she was in the hospital… she told me she was proud of you. For being strong. She said she knew how much you wanted to be there. For her. For Dad. But you couldn’t, because you were a mother. And she understood that.”

I choke on a breath. “She did? She knew how much I loved her?”

“She did,” Cory says quietly.

We sit there, the three of us, and cry. For everything we’ve lost.

For Robert and Mary.

For the childhood home now filled with silence.

For the kitchen that once smelled like pancakes and bacon on Sunday mornings.

For the porch where Dad used to sit with his coffee and the radio.

For all the things we can’t get back.

One second, we were showing up to our parents’ house unannounced, dropping in without calling first, just like always. And the next… we were watching them get buried.

Marianne was the one at the hospital with them, masked and gloved and pretending not to cry. Cory handled the logistics, both funerals, one after the other.

And me? I just... watched.

I nodded at the right times. But I didn’tgrieve.We didn’t grieve together.

Until now.

Right here, in the living room where we once played tag and opened Christmas presents and fell asleep on Dad’s lap. Now, the three of us sit, grown, orphaned, broken, holding each other.

Time moves strangely after that.

It takes a while for me to pull myself together.

It’s March when the government finally announces the end of the lockdown. Not that most people were following it anymore. By then, the rules had blurred, softened into suggestion. Mask mandates were gone, stores were full, restaurants loud again.

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