“What?”
“He asked if you were going to disappear.”
My chest tightened.
“What?”
“He'd noticed you weren't eating. He'd noticed you stopped drawing during study hall. He noticed you sat alone sometimes.”
I looked at the floor.
I'd forgotten how bad that year had been.
Ethan hadn't.
Mom continued.
“He said, ‘Maddie is still here, but sometimes she looks like she isn't.’”
I swallowed hard.
“What did you say?”
“I told him you were hurting.”
Mom's fingers twisted together.
“He asked how to make you better.”
I laughed softly through the sudden pressure in my throat.
“That sounds like him too.”
“I told him he couldn't fix it.”
Mom looked directly at me.
“And Ethan said, ‘Okay. I don't know how to fix sad people anyway. But I can sit with her.’”
I couldn't speak.
Of course.
Lunch.
Baseball statistics.
Silence.
The stupid jokes.
He had been twelve years old.
Just a kid.
Mom wiped at her eyes.
“Then I did something that has bothered me ever since.”
“What?”
“I asked him to make me a promise.”
My pulse quickened.
“What promise?”
She hesitated.
“Maddie, I was terrified. You weren't talking to me. You were angry at your father. You were angry at me. But you still talked to Ethan.”
I waited.
“So I asked him…”
Her voice broke.
“…to promise that if you started shutting everyone out, he wouldn't leave you alone.”
I stared at her.
“You asked a twelve-year-old boy to take care of me?”
She flinched.
“I know how that sounds.”
“No, Mom, that's exactly what you did.”
“I was desperate.”
“You put that responsibility on Ethan?”
“I know.”
I stood.
For a moment, I was furious.
Not because Ethan had known I was struggling.
Because Mom had asked a child to carry something that should never have belonged to him.
Then she said:
“That's not the part I'm most ashamed of.”
I turned.
She was crying now.
“For six years, I kept thinking about that promise.”
“What do you mean?”
“Every time you stayed home because Ethan wasn't invited somewhere, every time you defended him, every time you changed plans to include him…”
Her eyes dropped.
“I wondered whether you were doing it because you felt responsible for him.”
I went still.
“You thought I was taking care of him.”
“Yes.”
“Because he has Down syndrome.”
Mom's face crumpled.
“Yes.”
The answer hurt more because she didn't try to excuse it.
“I kept looking at your friendship and asking what Ethan required from you.”
She shook her head.
“I never asked what he gave you.”
Images rushed through my mind.
Ethan sitting beside me when my parents divorced.
Cookies after my driving test.
My dinosaur drawing taped to his locker.
Chocolate ice cream after heartbreak.
A hundred ordinary moments I had never classified as acts of love because they were simply Ethan being Ethan.
Mom covered her mouth.
