“Thank you for visiting. You need to leave now.”
He glanced at Gabriel.
Gabriel started to speak.
“Danny. Please leave.”
He stood and left without arguing.
Gabriel looked at me.
“Sara.”
“Get out of this room.”
“This is my house.”
“Leave the room, Gabriel.”
He studied my face, then walked out.
I helped Mom into bed, checked her medicine, and discovered she had missed a dose. I made ginger tea and sat with her while she drank it.
“I shouldn’t have let him move me,” she whispered.
“Mom, you have cancer. You are on chemotherapy. Managing Gabriel’s behavior is not your job.”
“He’s your husband.”
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“Yes.”
“I don’t want to cause problems between you.”
“You didn’t.”
“He said the game was important.”
I stared at her.
“The game?”
She nodded.
“I didn’t want to be the reason for a fight.”
“You are never the reason for this fight.”
She looked tired.
“I’m not sure Gabriel sees it that way.”
“I know.”
When she finished the tea, she apologized again for my coming home to a mess.
“I’m glad I came home early,” I said.
“I would have been fine.”
“I know you would have managed. That is not the point.”
She looked at me.
“You do not have to manage everything alone anymore. You are allowed to need people.”
“It feels like weakness.”
“It isn’t weakness.”
“What is it, then?”
“It’s letting someone love you.”
She was quiet for a while.
“Your father always said I was terrible at that.”
“He was right.”
She smiled faintly.
“I’m trying.”
“I know.”
I stayed until she fell asleep, then went downstairs.
Gabriel was in the kitchen cleaning up some of the bottles.
“Sara, before you say anything, Danny called and wanted to come over. I didn’t know you were returning early.”
“I know.”
“I would have set things up differently if I knew.”
“That is exactly the problem.”
He frowned.
“What?”
“You would have behaved differently if you knew I was watching.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Yes, it is. You moved my seventy-year-old mother, who is receiving chemotherapy, out of the room I prepared for her and onto an air mattress in the basement because your brother wanted to watch football. You did it because you thought I would not find out for four days.”
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“She was fine.”
“She was not fine.”
“She didn’t complain.”
“Gabriel, my mother has spent seventy years not complaining. She would probably apologize if you put her outside. Her silence does not make what you did acceptable.”
His jaw tightened.
“I’m the man of the house.”
There it was again.
“You are my husband,” I said. “You are not the man of the house in the way you mean it. We bought this house together. We both pay for it. We both own it. Being a man does not give you more authority than me.”
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“I know she has cancer.”
