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I hadn’t realized how tight my shoulders were until I sat down.

The white cane chair creaked beneath my weight as I lowered myself onto the porch, its woven seat cool against the backs of my thighs even through denim. I kept my spine straight, too straight, hands folded loosely in my lap like I was bracing for an interview instead of coming home. The Bayou air clung to my skin, thick and wet, carrying the familiar perfume of gardenia and river mud, but it did nothing to loosen the knot wound tight between my shoulder blades. My mother moved inside the house behind me. I could hear her soft, measured footsteps on old floorboards, the quiet clink of ceramic as she pulled mugs from the cupboard. The kettle whistled low on the stove, not urgent, not dramatic. Everything about her movements felt careful. Controlled. As if any sudden sound might crack something fragile wide open.

I stared out over the yard instead. The garden had gone feral in the months since I’d last been here. Jasmine climbed where it pleased, Spanish moss drooped from the live oaks like tired lace, and the herb beds my grandmother once kept immaculate had collapsed into a tangle of green defiance. It was still beautiful. Painfully so. The kind of beauty that didn’t ask permission to exist. I swallowed hard. Behind me, the screen door sighed open. My mother stepped out onto the porch with two mugs cupped carefully in her hands, steam curling up into the humid air. She looked thinner than I remembered. Not frail, she’d never allow herself that, but pared down, like something essential had been carved away. Her hair was pulled back into a low knot at her nape, silver threaded through dark strands she hadn’t bothered to dye in years. She wore a soft linen dress the color of washed sage and the old cardigan she kept for mornings that crept into bone.

She didn’t look at me right away. She set the mugs down on the small table between us with deliberate care, as if the act required her full concentration. One mug slid toward me. Chamomile. Of course. She always remembered that.

“Careful,” she said quietly, breaking the silence at last. “It’s hot.”

“Thank you.” My voice sounded too formal in my own ears. Like a stranger. 

She sat opposite me in the matching cane chair, smoothing her skirt over her knees, posture straight but not relaxed. Her eyes finally lifted to mine, and faltered, just for a fraction of a second, before she masked it. There it was. The look. The same wary assessment I was giving her. We studied each other across the small table like women negotiating a ceasefire rather than a reunion. Mother and daughter, yes, but also two people who had learned, over time, how easily love could become leverage.

“You look tired,” she said.

“So do you.”

A ghost of a smile touched her mouth and vanished just as quickly. “Long drive?”

“Flight,” I corrected. “Then a bus.”

She nodded, fingers curling around her mug. “You didn’t call.”

“I needed… space.” She accepted that without comment, though something tight flickered behind her eyes. “I figured.” 

The kettle clicked off inside the house, the only sound punctuating the quiet. Cicadas buzzed lazily from the trees. Somewhere in the distance, a bird cried out, a sharp, lonely sound that scraped against my nerves. I took a sip of tea. It tasted like home. It made my chest ache. 

“She’s worse,” my mother said finally. There was no preamble. No soft lead-in. Just the truth, dropped between us like a stone into still water.

I lowered the mug slowly. “How much worse?” 

Her gaze drifted past me, out toward the yard. Toward the garden. “Some days she doesn’t know where she is. Some days she thinks she’s still in the old house on Dauphine Street. Yesterday she asked me why her hands wouldn’t listen to her anymore.”

My fingers tightened around the mug. “Did she... Does she know who you are?” 

A pause. Too long.

“Most days,” my mother said. “Some days she calls me by her sister’s name.”

“And me?”

Her jaw worked. “She hasn’t seen you yet.”

The words landed heavier than I expected. I looked down at my hands, at the faint dirt still caught beneath my nails from pulling weeds earlier, and tried to breathe through the sudden pressure in my chest.

“You brought her home,” I said, not quite a question.

“Yes.”

“The facility—”

“Wasn’t equipped,” my mother cut in, sharper than before. She caught herself, exhaled slowly. “They weren’t equipped for her needs. Not really. Not someone like Evelyn.”

Someone like Evelyn. I almost laughed. Almost.

“They kept her medicated,” my mother continued, voice tightening. “Quiet. Compliant. They treated her like a problem to be managed instead of a woman who spent her entire life connected to the land, to… things they didn’t understand.”

“Magic,” I said softly. Her eyes flicked back to mine. Studied me. Measured how much I still believed.

“She kept asking for her plants,” my mother said. “Kept asking why the moon felt wrong. One of the nurses told me it was ‘sundowning.’” Her mouth thinned. “I told her my mother has tracked lunar cycles longer than she’s been alive.”

A familiar heat stirred behind my ribs. Pride, anger, then grief all braided too tight.

“So you brought her here,” I said.

“Yes.” My mother wrapped both hands around her mug now, knuckles paling. “I couldn’t leave her there. Not like that.”

I nodded slowly. “I understand.”

She watched me carefully. “Do you?”

I met her gaze. “I do.”

Another silence settled between us thick and heavy with everything we weren’t saying. About how long it had taken me to come home. About how many phone calls I’d let go unanswered before that. About how much easier it was to stay gone than to watch someone you loved unravel thread by thread.

“She was fine,” I said suddenly. “The last time I saw her.”

My mother didn’t interrupt.

“She was loud,” I went on, the memory rising unbidden, vivid and sharp. “She wouldn’t stop talking. About the soil, I think. Or maybe it was the rosemary bush. She kept saying it was planted in the wrong place, that it didn’t like the way the morning sun hit it.” I swallowed. “She told me the garden listens when you speak to it,” I said. “Said magic doesn’t disappear—it just gets quieter when people stop paying attention.”

My mother’s eyes softened despite herself.

“She was convinced she could bring that old fig tree back,” I continued, a sad smile tugging at my mouth. “Said it was only pretending to die.”

“She always hated giving up on living things,” my mother murmured.

“On anything,” I agreed.

The porch creaked as my mother shifted in her chair. “That was before the falls,” she said gently. “Before the confusion started stacking instead of passing.”

I closed my eyes briefly. Pressed my tongue to the roof of my mouth until the sting faded. “I should’ve come sooner,” I said.

“Yes,” my mother replied. Not cruelly and certainly not angrily. Just... honestly. The word settled between us, undeniable.

“I didn’t know how,” I admitted. “Every time I thought about it, I pictured her like she was that last day; hands covered in dirt, laughing like she’d cracked some secret the rest of us missed. I didn’t want to replace that.”

My mother’s gaze dropped to her lap. “Neither did I.” She inhaled slowly, then looked back up at me, eyes shining but dry. “But loving her doesn’t stop time, Holby. It just makes watching harder.”

The cicadas grew louder as the sun dipped lower, the light shifting from gold to something deeper, more bruise-toned. Shadows stretched across the porch, catching in the lines of my mother’s face, the years etched there by duty and devotion.

“She asks about you,” my mother said quietly. “Sometimes. When she can remember who we are. Who you are.”

My throat tightened. “What do you tell her?”

“That you’re busy,” she replied. “That you’re living.”

A bitter smile curved my lips. “Am I?”

She studied me for a long moment. “You look like someone running from something,” she said. “Which usually means you’re running toward it too.”

I huffed a short breath. “You’ve always been good at that.”

“At seeing?” She shrugged. “Occupational hazard.”

We sat there, mother and daughter, tea cooling between us, the weight of Evelyn’s presence pressing against the house like a held breath.

“I don’t know how to be here,” I said finally.

“You don’t have to,” my mother replied. “Not all at once.”

I nodded, staring out at the garden again: the wild, beautiful mess of it. The stubborn green pushing up through neglect.

“I’d like to see her,” I said.

My mother rose slowly from her chair. “She’s in the back room,” she said. Then, softer: “Take your time.”

As she opened the door, I stayed seated for just a moment longer, pressing my palms into my knees, steadying myself. The porch creaked beneath me, the house waiting. I wasn’t ready. But I stood anyway.