She walked in like she was inspecting a failure
My mother arrived perfectly on time.
Camel-colored coat. Heels clicking against our crooked walkway. Perfume that hit before she did.
I opened the door, and she walked in without saying hello.
She scanned the room once, then grabbed the doorframe like she needed to steady herself.
Her eyes moved across the secondhand couch, the scuffed coffee table, the faded crayon marks Aaron left along the baseboards — marks I never bothered to erase.
She walked through the living room like the floor might collapse under her.
“Oh my God,” she said, voice sharp. “What is this?”
She stopped in the hallway.
Her gaze landed on Aaron’s green handprints outside his bedroom — the ones he pressed there after we painted together.
And in the corner of his room sat an upright piano.
The lacquer was worn. The left pedal squeaked. One key stuck halfway down.
Aaron walked in from the kitchen holding a juice box.
He glanced at her. Then at the piano.
Without a word, he climbed onto the bench and started to play.
The melody was slow and hesitant.
Chopin.
The same piece my mother drilled into me until my hands went numb.
She turned, frozen.
“Where did he learn that?” she asked, quieter now.
“He asked,” I said. “So I taught him.”
Aaron climbed down and walked over, holding a drawing with both hands like it mattered.
“I made you something,” he said.
It was a picture of our family standing on the porch.
And in the upstairs window, he’d drawn my mother, surrounded by flower boxes.
“I didn’t know what kind of flowers you liked,” he said, “so I drew all of them.”
My mother took the paper like it might break.
Then Aaron added, casually:
“We don’t yell here. Daddy says yelling makes the house forget how to breathe.”
Her jaw tightened.
She blinked hard.
But she didn’t speak.
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