“Your father is building something for us,” Mom would always say.
“He’ll be here when he can.”
He was always somewhere else.
When I was fourteen, Mom discovered a lump.
She died two years later.
I was sixteen.
My father wasn’t there.
He was in Chicago negotiating the biggest deal of his career.
The doctors had believed Mom had a few more weeks.
Dad thought he had time.
She died on a Thursday afternoon in March at Emory hospice.
I was holding one of her hands.
Our housekeeper, Marisol, held the other.
Raymond waited outside.
Raymond Ellis had been my father’s driver since I was thirteen.
Tall.
Quiet.
Gray beginning at his temples.
A calm voice and gentle hands.
He drove me to school.
Picked me up after practice.
Remembered my friends’ names.
When my mother stopped breathing, I walked into the hallway.
Raymond was standing there.
He didn’t say anything.
He simply opened his arms.
I walked into them.
And he held me while I fell apart.
My father landed in Atlanta at nine that night.
He came straight from the airport.
Gray business suit.
Briefcase still in his hand.
He stood in Mom’s doorway for a long time.
