We were silent for a minute.
“No,” Tim said. “At least, the doctor says it’s unlikely.”
“But we hope so,” Nick said, scowling. He doesn’t like it when Tim is that blunt. “We all really hope that you will.”
Of the three of us, Nick is definitely the one that wakes up every morning believing it really is possible that my mom will miraculously get her memory back. Tim believes that unlikely isn’t even the right word. For him, it was impossible, and we should just get used to it.
I’m somewhere in the middle.
I pulled out the pinochle deck, which my aunt and uncle taught us when we were little kids. It was kind of a family tradition.
~
“We used to play with your parents when we were younger,” Auntie Priya had explained in a recent game with the twins. (I was reading on the couch at the time.) “Your mother was quite good, though, of course, she had certain advantages.”
“Like what?” Katie asked. She was lying on her stomach, wedged between the couch and the coffee table, also reading.
“Your mother had a head for cards,” Uncle Gabriel clarified, shooting Auntie a look. “We used to have to get her drunk so that we’d stand a fighting chance.”
“Gabriel!” Priya scolded him with a smile. “She was never drunk. We simply enjoyed a few gin and tonics.”
“I’d enjoy a few gin and tonics,” Tim said, and Nick agreed. “Or beer!”
“Maybe next year,” Gabriel said. He had been known, when Auntie Priya was visiting her sister in California, to let the twins share a can of beer. I had no interest.
“No, not next year. Not until you’re off to university.” Auntie Priya ended it there.