He was not asking to repair something he’d broken because he loved it.
He was reaching for me the way a falling man reaches for the nearest solid thing.
I knew the difference because I had spent six years being the nearest solid thing, the reliable surface his whole family leaned on and never once thanked.
And I understood, with that final clarity, that “can we fix this” was simply the newest version of the same request every one of them had been making of me for years: be the one who absorbs it, be the one who holds it together, be the one who asks for nothing. I had answered that request with my whole self for six years.
I was not going to answer it again, not even now, not even to a man in a hospital bed with tears in his eyes — because I had finally learned that a woman can be a solid thing to lean on and still be a person, and that the two are only compatible when the leaning goes both ways, and in this family it never had.
Chapter 15 — Both My Duties