My mother opens the door with a fatigued face embellished with a solar smile. “My son, come.”

  She lifts her arms and makes the noisiest kiss on my cheek but I accept it and return the embrace. “Do you feel better?”

  “What do you mean?” her words are pronounced fully and with a distinct tempo I could listen to for days and nights. I try to stop her in her tracks, but she’s already opening cabinets and displaying desserts and pastries on the table. Slapped my hand twice.

  “Dad told me you were sick. Isn’t he here?”

  “No. Your sister has a night out and your father is working late. Again.” She gestures for me to sit down with her. When I obey but don’t start eating, she grabs a cookie and put it in front of me.

  “You made ? You know it’s not Christmas yet.” I joke.

  She bats her hand and rests her elbows on the table. She looks tired. “One of your sister’s whims.”

  Since her back injury, my mother cannot work anymore. She has a special permit that allows her to rest at home while still earning a certain amount of money. She had tried asking my father to find her a job position at his firm as a secretary, a position that wouldn’t ask too much of her but he refused. He didn’t want to see her work at all. Her accident happened not so long ago and it inflicted another stab into an already healing wound. She complained that keeping her locked would only make her die sooner but Stefan is a stubborn man.

  He only lets her tend the garden on her best days. “So?”

  “So what?”

  “How do you feel? Are you still sick?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t have kissed you if I was still sick, ! It was just a little...” She touches her throat twice and searches for the words.

  “Inflammation?”

  “.” She agrees.

  I bite into the cookie, the scent of cinnamon beautifully burning my nose. “You know you can call me if you need to go somewhere. I can drive you.”

  “I know, I know. You sound like your father.”

  I snort. If we had something in common, it would be our love for our family. And yet, when I think back, I can pinpoint a moment or two where this wasn’t his priority. “I’m sure you don’t take that as a compliment.” She adds. And the sentiment that fills my bones is disappointment. “He’s a devoted man, .”

  “For his work, yes.”

  “It does make me think of someone else, too.” She eyes me with a mischievous grin on her face. I know where Elena got that from.

  “I his son. He did raise me with his values.”

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  “Don’t pretend he is the only one that got you so workaholic.”

  “That’s a fancy word. Where did you read it?”

  She giggles. “On a stupid people magazine.” She brings another cookie from the plate to my hand. I’m not even hungry, but I eat it anyway. It makes her happy. To know her children are healthy. If there is health at least, happiness can be worked on. That is one of the values she educated in me. “You are angry.”

  She says it with a softness that could easily bring tears to my eyes. My mom is definitely my soft spot and the crimes I would be ready to commit in the sole purpose of protecting her reach the worst ones. Our hazel eyes clashes and she lifts her fingers to brush my cheek, my hair, my ear. “It will eat you inside.”

  I swallow the lump in my throat. She is right. Yet, I can handle the acknowledgment of moving on. Moving on would mean forgetting and this isn’t option. My presence at the University, the courses that I teach, the articles that I write, all of it is a perfect reminder of what I should never forget.

  She waits for an answer, I realize, but despite chasing the tears away, I have to nod, because my mouth can’t open. “I want you to be happy, love. You deserve to do this for you. Your father is already hard to handle.”

  The words snap inside my brain. “What do you mean?”

  “Don’t you think for a second that your father is not affected anymore. He is still hurting. Just as much as you.”

  “How? Didn’t coming here wasn’t his way of putting the past behind? Wasn’t it his way of saying goodbye?” My tone is harsher but she knows it’s not meant for her. She keeps patting my hair and it grounds me to the present.

  “You have always been like this, my boy.” Her expression is endearing. I frowned. Stefan and her married young but waited much time before even consider the concept of having children. Creating a family. They wanted to explore everything that they wished. She explained their desire to know each other better, enough, to make sure their kids would grow in the best loving environment possible. I was skeptical at first, because this didn’t sound like my father at all. For as long as I’ve known him, and for as far as my souvenirs go, he’s always been cold. Calculating. Buried at work. Present at our family dinners and gatherings but often late. What she was describing was a man and a painting I never experienced myself. So far stretched that I wondered if she wasn’t just lying to avoid worrying me.

  But Katarina is not a liar. She is the most honest person that I ever knew. And Jesse is hard to beat. He is the most person I know. “You have always taken to heart what was deeply important to you. Sometimes to the point where you find yourself lost.”

  She is also always on point. Whenever I had trouble expressing my feelings as a child, she would immediately find the words and I only had to nod. It seems I’m an open book to her. Maybe because I’m her son. Or probably because I’m so undeniably obvious. “I won’t lose myself, mom.”

  “I see it. Your worry. In your wrinkles.” She touches the soft skin next to my eye and between my eyebrows.

  “Hey. I’m not that old yet.”

  She huffs and smiles. “How is work going? Something happened?”

  “Quite the opposite, actually. Nothing seems to be going forward. I’m getting impatient.”

  “Elena said you met a man. She insisted you were boyfriends.”

  I have to bite my lip hard not to curse in front of my mother. She despises hearing us use swear words. The only ones she says sometimes are in Slovak. But in a time like this, I wish I could curse a little. “We are definitely not. She saw us talking and made-up immature conclusions.”

  “That does sound like your sister.” Her smile shines as bright as the light in the room. The sun is slowly descending and the orange glow of it setting engulfs the kitchen with an aura instilled in confessions.

  “Would it be a problem?” I ask.

  Her eyes dart to mine and search for the reasons inside. “If you had a boyfriend?”

  I only nod. My heart is beating hard. I don’t know why I need to hear this, but apparently, I must. Because her answer brings relief. “Oh , of course not.”

  Her arms snake around my body and we embrace for a long time in pure silence. When I pull back, the night has begun. And I drive back to my apartment with a weird feeling inside.