“Yes.”
There was a silence.
Then, “Why would you do that without talking to me?”
I looked down at the cast around my wrist.
For a moment, I genuinely wondered whether he heard himself.
“You told me not to come back,” I said.
“That’s not the same thing.”
“You told me to stay away from you.”
“I meant from the house.
From us for a while.
I didn’t mean—”
He stopped.
“You didn’t mean financially?” I asked.
Another silence.
I could hear movement on his end, then Ellie’s voice somewhere nearby.
I couldn’t make out the words, only the sharpness of them.
Jacob lowered his voice.
“Mom, you know how important this house is.”
I glanced at the folder on my kitchen table.
“Yes,” I said.
“That’s why you asked me to put my name on the loan.”
“We can fix this.
Just call them back and tell them you changed your mind.”
The ease with which he said it surprised me more than the request itself.
There was no question about my wrist.
No question about urgent care.
No question about what had happened after he stayed upstairs.
Just the loan.
“Jacob,” I said, “do you know I went to urgent care?”
He went quiet.
That answered me before he spoke.
“Ellie said you were fine when you left.”
I closed my eyes.
“When exactly did she tell you that?”
He hesitated.
“After.”
“So you knew something happened.”
“Mom, I don’t want to get into this right now.”
Of course he didn’t.
The mortgage was urgent.
My injury was inconvenient.
I had spent years teaching Jacob that avoidance did not make difficult things disappear.
Yet here he was, trying to separate the loan from the behavior that had changed my willingness to guarantee it.
“Then we don’t have anything else to discuss right now,” I said.
“Wait.”
I waited.
He sounded different when he continued.
Less commanding.
More afraid.
“They’re saying they can’t complete the loan like this.”
I didn’t answer.
“Ellie hasn’t started the new job yet.
They can’t count everything the way we expected.
Without you…”
He let the sentence die.
Without me.
