The Day I Stopped Asking

Sometimes I wonder if everything would have been different if my dad hadn’t died that spring morning. I was six. He was making pancakes—his Sunday special—shaped into lopsided smiley faces that always made me giggle.

“Lily, princess, come help your old man flip these masterpieces,” he called, twirling the spatula like a magician’s wand.

I ran to the kitchen, leaving my stuffed bunny on the couch. The spatula clattered to the floor. Dad’s hand flew to his chest. His mouth opened, but no sound came out. Sirens, the blue-white stutter of fluorescent lights, Mom’s sobs swallowing whole words. Then quiet. A quiet so big it lodged in the house like a new piece of furniture.

 

 

Mom didn’t cry for long. She met Richard at a support group for widowed parents—a tall man with kind eyes and the kind of patience taught by loss. Within a year, they married. I was still learning his rhythms when Mom’s smile got a new brightness.

“I’m pregnant,” she told me, cheeks pink, hands clasped. “You’re going to be a big sister.”

Tommy arrived like a second sunrise. Mom quit her job at the elementary school—“These early years are crucial,” she told anyone who blinked—and began orbiting him like something caught in gravity. Lunches were forgotten. Doctor’s appointments multiplied. Apologies got shorter.

“Oh, I’m sorry, sweetie. Tommy’s checkup ran long.”

Richard noticed first. At dinner he’d watch Mom hover, coaxing one more bite into Tommy’s already smudged mouth. “Sarah,” he said one night, putting down his fork. “You’ve got two kids here. And a husband.”

“What are you trying to say?” Mom’s face hardened, like a door locking. “That I’m a bad mother?”

“That’s not what I meant,” he said calmly. “He needs to learn to do things on his own.”

“I was young too,” I muttered into my mashed potatoes. No one heard.

Richard tried bringing Tommy into the world anyway. “Little League,” he suggested, and Mom recoiled like he’d offered a casserole of nails.

“Baseball is dangerous—he could get hit, twist an ankle—”

“For God’s sake, Sarah. He needs to experience life.”

Tommy went to art class instead, sullenly dragging paint across paper while other kids tried. He quit after three sessions; Mom blamed the teacher’s “lack of vision.” Richard started spending more time with me. He took me to karate three nights a week, sat through every belt test, clapped until his hands were red. While I learned to kiai, Tommy learned how to make a mess and let others clean it.

 

 

“Lily, be a dear and tidy Tommy’s room,” Mom would sing, handing me a trash bag.

Richard caught me once, arms full of balled-up T-shirts. “She’s not his maid,” he said, eyes on Mom. “He needs to learn.”

“I knew it,” Mom said, voice wobbling into tears. “You love her more than your own son.”

Richard’s shoulders sagged. He lifted his hands in surrender. “Have it your way,” he said, but later, when he tucked me in, his palm on my hair said: I see you.

Graduation day smelled like hairspray and daisies. I found Richard in the crowd, beaming like a lighthouse. Mom was there too, thumbs busy on her phone. That night, Richard called me into his study and put a folder in my lap.

“I’ve been saving,” he said. “Pick anywhere you want.”

Mom burst in. “You can’t be serious,” she said. “That money should be saved for Tommy’s future.”

“This is non-negotiable,” Richard said, with a new steel in his voice. “I’ve already decided.”

I chose a school far enough to breathe and close enough to drive. The day I moved into my dorm, Mom stayed home—“Tommy’s anxious,” she said—and Richard carried my boxes up three flights, then stood in the doorway like a father trying to memorize a daughter he had not raised but had chosen.

College was a new country. I called home weekly, and my conversations were with Richard. “He’s with kids from the wrong side of the tracks,” he’d say of Tommy, tired in a way that lives in your shoulders. “I tried to get him into a program, but your mother…”

“Let me guess,” I said. “You’re a tyrant who doesn’t understand his sensitivity.”

“You’ve heard this one,” he sighed.

I visited less as Tommy’s silence thickened. He stared past me on the couch, controller in hand, eyes rarely blinking. “Want lunch?” I tried once. Gunfire crackled from the TV. “He’s not feeling social,” Mom said, breezing by with a laundry basket. “He’s very stressed.”

At twenty-seven, I closed on a one-bedroom in a modest building—the kind with potted geraniums in the windows and a mailbox that stuck in cold weather. “Housewarming, Saturday,” I told them. “I’ll make lasagna.”

“Wouldn’t miss it,” Richard said. Mom’s voice cut in on the line. “Tommy has plans,” she said.

“What kind of plans?” I asked, and the game in the background answered for her.

Richard came alone with a plant and a bottle of red. Over dinner he told me he’d offered Tommy a starter job at his construction firm. “Everyone needs to start somewhere,” he said, twirling pasta. “But Sarah said it was beneath him.”

“Too intelligent for manual labor,” I said. “Just intelligent enough to mooch.”

He smiled, sad and proud at once. “I keep trying, Lily. God knows I keep trying.”

Two years later, we buried him. Massive heart attack. Same as my father; grief has a sick sense of humor. Mom cried into strangers’ shoulders and told them how happy they’d been. I watched her performance and saw the ledger behind it: his income gone, savings dwindling, a grown son still sucking on her accounts like a cracked pipe.

Tommy came in wrinkled khakis, scowled at his phone, and left early. Mom invited pity to fill the pew he’d vacated.

A year later, my aunt called. “They’re getting by on savings,” she said. “She sold Richard’s truck. The workshop tools went first.”

When Mom’s number lit my screen on a Tuesday night, I almost didn’t answer. “I need you to come home,” she said. Something in her voice scraped against a soft part of me I thought I’d hardened.

The house had sagged, as if sorrow were heavy and the rafters tired. Paint peeled, the lawn went to seed, and the living room smelled like a broom had lost the will to live. Mom had, too; she’d aged twenty years in twelve months.

“We’re running out of money,” she said. “My pension barely covers utilities, and the savings…” She twisted her hands. “They’re almost gone.”

“What about Tommy?” I asked. “Is he helping?”

“He’s looking for work,” she said quickly. “It’s not his fault employers don’t understand him. The last place wanted him to start at eight. You know he’s not a morning person.”

By the window, Tommy’s screen flickered. A familiar blue cast. “How much?” I asked, because parts of us are trained to answer even when we know we shouldn’t.

“Fifteen hundred,” she said. “A month.”

It was rent money, car money, a future vacation money—but it was also the way Richard had looked at me at nineteen with his hand on my shoulder, telling me the sky was the limit. I nodded and set up the transfer.

The months fell into a new pattern. I sent money. I visited and bought groceries. I hired a home health aid when Mom sprained her ankle—“Tommy’s doing interviews,” Mom said as I signed the check. I used my Christmas bonus to fix the water stain on the ceiling and hang new wallpaper. The house looked briefly like the one in my memory. Then I met Candi.

She was sprawled on Richard’s old couch, acrylic nails glittering, a smirk painted on. “Who are you?” I asked, setting bags on the counter.

“His fiancée,” Tommy called from his room. “She lives here now.”

Candi didn’t look up when she reached into my groceries and ripped open the cookies. “Nice to meet you, too,” I said to the room and took a breath I wished came with a tranquilizer in it.

“Isn’t it wonderful?” Mom said later, eyes shiny. “Tommy’s finally settling down. Candi’s cousin knows someone at a startup. This could be his big break.”

I had lost count of Tommy’s big breaks. But hope was the only thing Mom fed herself, and I couldn’t bear to be the one to slap the fork out of her hand.

The next time I came over, the house looked like a cautionary tale. Takeout containers multiplied like rabbits; dishes stacked like Jenga. Candi lay on the couch like a cat sunning itself on someone else’s windowsill.

“You live here rent-free, eat the food I buy—wash a dish,” I said. My voice surprised me with its edge.

She smirked. “Who do you think you are? This isn’t your house.”

“I grew up here,” I said. “You’re a guest.”

“Oh, honey.” She laughed, the kind that peels wallpaper. “This house belongs to Tommy. Your mom signed everything over. There’s a will and everything.”

I found Mom in the kitchen, sorting coupons she never used. “Is it true?” I asked. “You made a will leaving everything to Tommy?”

She wouldn’t meet my eyes. Then she did, and there was something in her face I hadn’t seen since the night Dad died: a decision.

“Yes,” she said. “It’s true.”

“I don’t understand,” I said, and then I did. I heard my own voice, low and almost calm. “I’m the one helping you. I send money every month. Tommy doesn’t work. He doesn’t contribute.”

“Don’t you dare talk about your brother that way,” she snapped. “You don’t understand him. You never have.”

“Understand what? That he’s a parasite? That he’s content to live off me while his girlfriend trashes our home?”

“Oh, stop being dramatic.” Her face twisted into something I will not forget. “You want the truth? I never loved you the way I love Tommy. He’s better than you in every way that matters. And I don’t want to see you here anymore.”

Twenty-one years of hoping, of explaining, of making myself smaller to fit into the space she gave me, all ended on the click of a door.

I drove home without remembering the roads. I sat on my couch without remembering sitting. Then I opened my banking app and touched the button that stopped the money. It was almost absurd—how quiet a revolution could be.

A month later, my phone rang. “The transfer didn’t come,” Mom said. “There must be a mistake.”

“There’s no mistake,” I said. “I canceled it.”

“How dare you?” she hissed. “After everything I’ve done for you—”

“Like what?” I asked. “Forgetting my lunches? Making me clean Tommy’s room? Telling me you never loved me?”

“That’s different. I was upset. You can’t just stop helping us. We’re counting on that money. Tommy and Candi—”

“Need a vacation?” I said, and felt the laugh rise, sharp and clean. “From what? Tommy needs a job.”

“You ungrateful—” Her voice climbed into the octave where reason goes to die. I hung up. Then I blocked the number.

They found other ways. Facebook messages coated in guilt. Instagram comments about how I was a terrible daughter. Emails listing all the sacrifices she’d made, most of which I couldn’t remember because they hadn’t happened. Tommy texted threats; I blocked him too. Candi messaged me on LinkedIn—LinkedIn—about my “poor mother’s broken heart.” I admired the creativity and deleted it.

Six months have passed. I don’t know how they’re doing. For the first time in my life, I don’t feel obligated to know. The fifteen hundred dollars a month I used to send now sits in a brokerage account labeled House Fund. I sleep through the night. Sometimes, driving home from work, I pass a construction site with a NOW HIRING sign and think about taking a picture to send to Tommy. Then I picture Richard’s face the day he handed me a folder and told me the sky was the limit.

I keep driving.

Their problems are no longer my problems. The quiet in my apartment doesn’t feel like absence anymore. It feels like space. Like a room I finally get to furnish with my own things.