Book Six: Chapter 37

There were so many questions that Mike had for the man. If his timeline was correct, this was the last Christmas he spent with his father. He would fall ill in the spring, and die before the summer. It was hard to believe that this was his family. He didn’t know how to reconcile his mother’s later behavior with the woman before him now. She had baked him cookies and read him stories. What had turned her into the emotional wrecking ball she had become?

“Why?” he asked her, knowing full well she couldn’t hear him. “What fudged you up so bad that you turned into a raging grinch?”

His mother stared ahead as if lost in thought. Mike recognized the look, it was the same one he made when he was thinking. Kisa had even snapped a picture to tease him with. When he was caught up in his own head, she liked to text it to him sometimes. With his mother, though, it was different. A switch had been flipped, and she had become disconnected from the world around her.

Noticing her s