Within a week, I relocated Mom to Florida. Paid the $80,000 penalty. Worth every cent. I visit her every day now. Tom and I don’t speak. When asked if I have a brother, I say yes—his name is Derek.
He stops by when passing through Florida. Mom lights up when she sees him, though she can’t recall why. “You look like my father,” she tells him. He smiles and replies, “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
He looked at me as though the answer was obvious. “Because she needed help. Because she mattered. And because I couldn’t live with myself if I left her there.”
I still wrestle with guilt over my own failure.
But I’m trying.
Now, I take Mom out to lunch three times a week. We watch her favorite shows. I hold her hand when she’s scared. I answer every call. She never waits alone anymore.
Derek taught me the meaning of true decency. A tattooed, leather-clad biker—the kind of man I might have judged—walked through a storm to save a stranger. And I, her son, didn’t pick up the phone.
My mother didn’t deserve that night. But she deserved the man who showed up.
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