Page 109 of Shattered Promise

A pause.

“I will. He’d love to hear from you, too. And if you ever feel up to, you know, coming to a game, just let me know. I told you he gets family tickets.”

I bite the inside of my cheek. “Yeah. Maybe I’ll do that.”

She lets the silence stretch. My mother has this freaky, psychic way of sensing when I’m off, even from three states away. I’m already bracing for the question.

“You holding up okay?” she asks, softening her voice.

I glance down at my grease-stained hands, seeps of black in the lines of my palms. “Yeah, Ma. Just busy.”

“Busy is good. How are you balancing? Did you hire a nanny yet?”

I close my eyes for a second, picturing Abby on her tip-toes at the kitchen counter, Theo’s fist wrapped tight around her pointer finger while she stirs oatmeal one-handed.

“Yeah,” I say, but the word feels too small. “Yeah, I did.”

Nannyfeels too small of a word for what Abby is to Theo—to us.

My mother’s tone perks up, laced with curiosity. “Is she working out?”

I hesitate—not because I don’t know what to say, but because I can feel the words clogging up my throat, thick and sticky as molasses. Something about Abby feels too close to the bone,like if I talk about her for too long, I’ll start admitting things I shouldn’t, even to my own mother. Especially to my mother.

“She’s great,” I settle on, but it comes out gruff. “Theo loves her.”

“Mm-hmm.” There’s a shuffle in the background. “And do you?”

I nearly drop the phone. “Jesus, Ma?—”

“Oh, don’t start with me, Mason. You know what I mean.” Her voice winds itself around the question, gentle but ferocious. “I’m not asking if you love her. I’m asking if you’re happy with someone taking care of your son.”

I can practically hear the eye roll across the phone line.

“Yeah,” I say again, but now the word has barbs. “I trust her.”

She makes a little considering hum, the same one she used to make when she’d pull splinters from my palms and check whether I was about to cry. “That’s good, honey. You can’t do it all yourself, you know.”

I stare at the tree line, letting the wind sting my eyes. “I’m managing.”

“Mm-hmm.” That’s the last she’ll push, for now. “I’m glad she’s working out. You know, I need to tell you something, and I don’t know how to say it. So I’m just going to rip the Band-Aid off and say it.”

I brace, a hundred different scenarios flashing across my brain, each one more devastating than the last.

“I’m listening.”

“I saw your father.”

The words slide through me, cold and sharp as lake ice. For a second, I don’t hear anything else—just the static thump of my own heartbeat.

She waits, letting the bomb settle.

“He was at Cal’s game last night,” she says, voice careful, like she’s stepping around a sleeping animal. “Showed up after the first period.”

I picture him: a ghost with my jawline and none of my voice, hands jammed into the pockets of a coat he never took off even indoors. I don’t know if he’s taller or shorter than I remember, but I see him in flashes—whiskey eyes, the gray at his temple, the way he could walk into a room and take all the oxygen with him before you even realized you were suffocating.

I say nothing. There’s no sentence long enough to outrun the memory of my father telling me he’d be right back to take me to my baseball game and never returning.

I hold the phone so tight my fingers throb.