The true depth of his detachment crystallized on a relentlessly dreary, rainy Tuesday. The chill of the Massachusetts autumn had seeped into the walls of my cramped, drafty apartment in Dorchester. Despite the cold radiating from the rattling windowpanes, I stood over my tiny stove, humming. Connor had just passed his final board exams. To celebrate, I had spent five hours preparing his childhood favorite—a rich, complicated baked ziti casserole, made with the expensive cheeses I usually couldn’t afford.
I set the small table with my best chipped plates, wrapping my swollen hands around a mug of hot tea to soothe the throbbing ache in my joints. He was supposed to arrive at six. By eight, the casserole was a lukewarm block, and the silence in the apartment was deafening.
When the door finally opened, he brought the smell of rain and expensive cologne with him. He was wearing a new jacket—a sleek, dark wool Tom Ford piece. I recognized it instantly. It was the jacket I had bought for him online three months ago, a purchase made possible only by canceling three months of my arthritis physical therapy.
“Connor, sweetheart, you’re freezing. Sit, I’ve kept it warm,” I said, pushing myself up from the chair. My right leg locked, sending a sharp, sickening spike of agony up my thigh, forcing me to limp heavily as I grabbed the oven mitts.
He didn’t take off his coat. He stood near the doorway, looking around my living room as if he had accidentally stepped into a stranger’s hovel. “I can’t stay long, Mom. I’ve got rounds early tomorrow.”
“Just a plate,” I pleaded, setting the steaming portion before his empty chair. I held it out, my scarred, calloused fingers trembling slightly under the weight of the ceramic.
He barely glanced at my hands. His eyes remained fixed on the cracked linoleum floor. “I’m not hungry. I had sushi with Grace’s family.”
Before I could swallow the lump of rejection in my throat, his cell phone chirped. A sharp, upbeat ringtone. Connor pulled it from his pocket, his posture instantly straightening. “It’s a classmate,” he muttered, stepping back out into the narrow, dimly lit hallway of my building to take the call.
He didn’t pull the thin door entirely shut.
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