Page 132 of Unmanageable

I try to find the standard, polished cadence that usually carries me through corporate crises—the tone that reassures anxious team owners and establishes boundaries with a single, professional breath.

I try to remember that I am Scottie Reed, the woman who manages the assets, the contracts, the PR storms.

I try to think about the team’s travel insurance policies, the press release we might need to draft if things take a turn, the fact that I shouldn’t even be in this state without an explicit authorization form from the firm’s compliance department.

I try to be his agent.

But her hand is so warm.

“I’m so sorry we couldn’t get here sooner,” I say, the professional armor cracking before I can even finish the sentence. “The flights from the—”

“You’re here now,” she interrupts gently, her fingers giving mine a soft, reassuring squeeze that I don’t deserve. “That’s what matters. He’s been waiting for Finn.”

She doesn’t give me a chance to step back into the shadow of the doorframe. Instead, she reaches out with her other hand and pulls me toward her.

It’s not even a polite, tentative embrace; it’s the heavy, unconditional pull of a mother who recognizes another person who loves her son.

“Thank you for bringing him home,” she whispers into my shoulder. “Thank you for taking care of my boy.”

My throat locks up entirely. I can’t speak, can’t promise her anything, can’t even find a way to justify my presence.

When she releases me, she goes back to Cash, taking his face between her hands.

“Look at you,” she says. “You look like you haven’t slept since Tuesday, Finn. Sit down before you fall down.”

Cash moves past us, his shoes silent on the linoleum now as he steps up to the side of the bed. He sinks into the small plastic chair by the rails, his knees nearly touching his chin because the seat is so low.

He reaches out, his massive hand—the one that has made thousands of glove saves at a hundred miles per hour—enveloping the frail, papery fingers of his father.

“Dad,” Cash says. His voice is a wreck. “Hey, Dad. It’s me. It’s Finn.”

The old man’s head moves slowly, the neck muscles twisting with a dry, clicking sound against the white pillowcase. His cloudy eyes slide away from the ceiling, rolling across the room until they land on Cash’s face.

Nothing happens.

The lines on his forehead stay slack.

The recognition doesn’t come.

“The water’s high today,” the old man mutters, his voice a ghost of a sound. “Tell the foreman we need the gravel at the third pier. The trucks are going to be late if the tide comes in.”

“Dad, no,” Cash whispers, leaning closer. “It’s Finnian. I’m home from the trip, Dad. We went all the way to Denver.”

The old man doesn’t look at him again. His gaze wanders back to the ceiling, his lips moving silently as he counts the tiny holes in the white tiles.

“He hasn’t known where he was since yesterday afternoon,” his mother says, coming to stand behind Cash’s chair. She rests her hands on his broad shoulders, her thumbs kneading the tension there. “He keeps trying to get up to find his work stuff. He thinks he’s thirty again, Finn.”

Cash doesn’t move. He keeps his face pressed against the rail of the bed, his chest heaving with a silent sob that shakes his entire upper body.

It’s a horrible, violent kind of grief—the kind that doesn’t have any sound to it because the man crying is too large to let the noise out in front of his mother.

“I should’ve been here,” Cash chokes out. “I shouldn’t have taken the road trip. I knew he was getting worse. I knew it when he called me and asked if I’d finished my homework.”

“Oh, Finnian, no,” his mother says, her own eyes filling with tears that run straight down into the deep lines around her mouth. She leans down, wrapping her arms around his neck from behind, burying her face in his hair.

“You couldn’t have stopped the bad from coming, baby. You have your own life. He was always so proud of you. Every time you were on the television, even when he didn’t know your name, he’d point at the screen and say, ‘That’s the boy from South Boston. That’s our boy.’”

I stand by the door, my back pressed against the wood, my hands buried deep in the pockets of Cash’s sweatshirt. My fingers find a loose thread in the hem and start pulling at it, over and over, until the cotton digs into my skin, marking me.