For Ryan, the rose pot on his windowsill was sacred. He’d mixed his mother’s ashes in the soil, creating a living memorial. Crimson roses bloomed each May, and he tended them like they carried his mother’s breath. Until the day his estranged father’s clumsy hands sent the pot crashing to the floor.
The roses always bloomed in May. Not the month his mother Rose died—that was November—but May, when she’d first planted them in the garden of his childhood home. 26-year-old Ryan always thought there was something poetic about how life continued its cycles despite the permanence of death.
He watered the plant on his windowsill, his finger testing the soil as he’d been taught. Not too wet, not too dry. Balance was key. Perfect.
The single pot didn’t need much. Just enough water and sunlight to coax the deep crimson buds into unfurling their petals. A new one was forming now, tiny and green but promising.
“Look, Mom,” he whispered, touching the bud gently. “Another one’s coming.”
Salem, his black cat, rubbed against his ankles, purring loudly as if in agreement. Ryan reached down to scratch behind her ears, earning an appreciative meow.
Suddenly, his phone vibrated on the nightstand. Ryan ignored it at first, but when it buzzed a second time, he sighed and picked it up. His father’s name flashed on the screen.
Ryan’s thumb hovered over the decline button, but something like guilt, obligation, or perhaps his mother’s voice in his head telling him to be kind made him answer.
“Hello?” His voice came out flat and emotionless.
“Ryan? It’s your dad.”
They were truly estranged now—Ryan deliberately keeping his father at arm’s length, screening his calls, and responding with minimal effort when contact couldn’t be avoided.
The anger still burned hot whenever Ryan remembered his father’s empty chair beside his mother’s hospital bed during those critical final weeks, choosing the comfort of a bar stool over the harsh reality of saying goodbye. Some betrayals, Ryan had decided, were simply unforgivable.
“Hey, Dad.” He leaned against the windowsill, looking out at the city below. “Everything okay?”
“Not really,” his father, Larry, replied, and something in his voice made Ryan stand straighter. “I’m a bit under the weather. Nothing serious,” he added quickly, “but the doctor says I shouldn’t be alone for a few days.”
Ryan closed his eyes. The library where he worked was heading into finals week… their busiest time. He’d been planning to use his evenings to work on his novel, the one he’d been writing and rewriting for nearly two years now.
“Can’t Uncle Mike help out?”
“He’s away on some fishing trip. Look, son, I wouldn’t ask if I had another option. It’s just for a few days.”
