“You are real,” I said. “You are my son, and you belong with people who treat you with love.”
He considered that, then reached for the stuffed dog beside his pillow.
“Can we go to the diner again?”
“Absolutely.”
He fell asleep a few minutes later with one hand curled around the dog’s worn ear.
I stood beside his bed longer than I needed to, listening to his breathing and thinking about how close I had come to accepting my family’s behavior as something we simply had to endure.
My phone was waiting on the kitchen counter.
Eleven missed calls.
The first voicemails were furious.
“How dare you embarrass me?” my mother demanded in the first one. “You made a scene over nothing.”
In the next message, she said, “It was one plate of food, Lucy.”
Another accused me of turning Dany against the family.
That one almost made me laugh.
