But she said no.
She went to the police anyway.
So now Chris is waiting for his court date.
And my parents?
They called and called after that.
Unknown numbers.
Then a message from some number I didn’t recognize.
Said they needed to meet.
Said they needed help again.
I didn’t reply.
Didn’t block it immediately either.
Just left it on read.
Then blocked it the next day.
I think about my mother sometimes.
Not in an—I don’t know—not like I miss her exactly.
More like I’ll be doing something normal, making coffee or whatever, and I’ll just think about her standing in my closet.
Forty seconds.
She knew exactly where the card was.
She’d been in that apartment enough times that she knew where I kept it.
That’s the part that still gets me a little.
Not the money, weirdly.
The 40 seconds.
Pickle’s doing great, by the way.
He’s bigger now.
He has this thing where he sits on the windowsill of the new house and watches the birds outside and makes that weird chattering sound at them.
He’s adjusted fine.
Better than me, probably.
My aunt texted me a few weeks ago.
Not asking for anything.
Just checking in.
She said my parents were really struggling.
No boat.
Savings mostly gone.
And now dealing with Chris’s legal stuff.
She wasn’t asking me to do anything.
I think she just wanted me to know.
I read it twice.
Then put my phone face down on the counter and went to make dinner.
I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel about all of it.
Like, genuinely don’t know.
They’re my parents.
My mother used to pack my lunch in these little containers with sections for everything.
She’d always put a note in there.
Just a small one.