Chapter 16

I search her eyes for some inkling of the pain inside her body that keeps her here, but I see nothing. Joey has her eyes, a light blue that mirrors the ocean. Beautiful eyes. I look into them and can almost see my mother as the girl she once was, before marriage and children and life in general turned her into the woman she is today. “What’s going on here, Mom?” I ask, almost afraid to know the answer. “What do the doctors say?”

She waves my questions away and laughs, a rich sound that belies the pajamas and the hospital bed. “Oh, it’s nothing to get all worked up about, honey. A touch of colitis—”

“What do you mean, nothing?” I snap. “Jesus, Mom, what do you think this is, a vacation?”