“Then why didn’t he answer?” I asked. “Why did he let her tell me that?”
Margaret didn’t have an answer. She helped me up and took my suitcase.
“Come to my place,” she said. “We’ll figure out what to do tomorrow. Right now you need to rest.”
“I can’t leave like this,” I protested. “All my things are in there.”
“And they’ll still be there tomorrow,” she said, firm but gentle. “Come on.”
We walked toward the elevator. Before entering, I looked back one last time. Door 304 remained closed. The light underneath was still on. Inside: my whole life. Outside: me, separated by a lock my own keys could no longer open.
In Margaret’s car, as we drove across the city, I tried to call Lucas another six times. Every call went straight to voicemail. I sent messages. None were read.
It was as if he had disappeared from the face of the earth.
Or worse—like he had decided I no longer existed.
“Tomorrow we’re going to see a lawyer,” Margaret said, eyes fixed on traffic. “I know someone. Robert. He’s good, and he won’t charge you for a consultation.”
“I don’t have money for lawyers,” I said, because the reality of my age and my bank account hit like another wave of nausea.
“That’s why I’m telling you,” Margaret snapped softly. “He won’t charge just to hear you out.”
I nodded, though I barely had the strength to do that.
Through the window, I watched the streets I knew by heart pass by. The bakery where I bought muffins on Sundays. The park where I took my grandson to play. The pharmacy where I picked up my prescriptions.
Everything remained the same. The world kept turning. People walked, laughed, lived—while I sat in that car feeling as if someone had ripped my heart out and thrown it away.
When we arrived at Margaret’s apartment, I sat on her beige sofa and finally allowed myself to cry. I didn’t sleep that night. I lay in her guest room staring at the white ceiling, counting the hours.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Lucas as a child: five years old in his school uniform waiting for me after class, ten years old crying because kids teased him for not having a father, fifteen years old hugging me when I told him I couldn’t buy the phone he wanted because we barely had enough for groceries.
And I always found a way. Always.
I worked double shifts at the hospital for eight years to help him through college. I sold my mother’s jewelry for the down payment on his first car. When he married Jessica, I gave them $20,000 I had saved for my own later years.
“So you can start off right,” I told them.
Jessica hugged me that day with tears in her eyes, calling me Mom.
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