The Light in the Window
Soon, that light became my clock.
Midnight. Two o’clock. Three.
While the neighborhood slept, Eli kept working.
On the third day, his mother called.
“Mave, his fingers are sore,” she said. “I wrapped them in cold bandages, and he unwrapped them. He missed a chemistry test.”
“Should I stop him?”
“I don’t think anything could,” she said quietly. “He’s been at that machine since he could reach the pedal. You know that.”
I did know.
I remembered watching her hem curtains while six-year-old Eli handed her pins from a magnetic dish and asked why thread had numbers. At ten, he filled the margins of spelling homework with dress sketches. At thirteen, he altered his own jackets on her old Singer machine.
After hanging up, I rested my forehead against the cool glass.
Two weeks felt impossible. It also felt like a countdown toward another disappointment I would somehow have to absorb for my daughter.
Meanwhile, Hazel continued to sink.
She stopped coming downstairs for breakfast. She wore the same gray hoodie for three days. When I knocked on her door, she answered in single syllables.
And I kept lying.
“I’m just running errands,” I would say.
In reality, I was buying ivory silk thread from the craft store using shopping lists Eli texted me.
