The braids were crooked.
One side was tighter than the other.
But I sat there holding back tears because I realized my uncle had spent his evening watching hair tutorials just for me.
“These girls talk too fast,” he muttered.
When puberty came, he walked into my room with a plastic grocery bag and a face so red I thought he might pass out.
“I bought… stuff,” he said, staring at the ceiling. “In case things happen.”
Pads.
Deodorant.
Cheap mascara.
A pink hairbrush.
“You watched YouTube again,” I said.
He grimaced. “Nobody should need twelve minutes to explain mascara.”
We didn’t have much money.
But I never felt like a burden.
He washed my hair in the kitchen sink with one hand under my neck and the other pouring warm water slowly.
“You’re okay,” he’d whisper. “I’ve got you.”
When I cried because I would never dance at school, never stand in a crowd, never run across a parking lot in the rain, he sat on the edge of my bed with his jaw tight.
“You are not less,” he told me. “Do you hear me, Emily? You are not less than anyone.”
By the time I was a teenager, it was clear there would be no miracle.
My chair became part of me.
My room became my world.
So Nathan turned that room into something bigger.
Shelves within reach.
A tablet holder he built himself in the garage.
A little desk that rolled over my bed.
For my twenty-first birthday, he built a planter outside my window and filled it with herbs.
“So you can grow that basil you keep yelling about on cooking shows,” he said.
I burst into tears.
Nathan panicked.
“Jesus, Emily,” he said. “Do you hate basil?”
“It’s perfect,” I sobbed.
He looked away, embarrassed.
“Yeah, well. Try not to kill it.”
Then Uncle Nathan started getting tired.
At first, it was small.
He sat halfway up the stairs to catch his breath.
He misplaced his keys.
He burned dinner twice in one week.
“I’m fine,” he said. “I’m getting old.”
He was only fifty-three.
Mrs. Patel, our neighbor, cornered him in the driveway one afternoon.
“Go to a doctor,” she ordered. “Do not be stupid.”
Between her scolding and my begging, he finally went.
After the tests, he sat at the kitchen table with papers under his hands.
“What did they say?” I asked.
He stared past me.
“Stage four,” he said.
The words didn’t feel real.
“It’s everywhere.”
“How long?” I whispered.
He shrugged.
“They said numbers. I stopped listening.”
He tried to keep everything normal after that.
He still made my eggs in the morning, even when his hand shook.
He still brushed my hair, even when he had to stop and lean against the dresser to breathe.
He still smiled whenever I caught him looking scared.
Then hospice came.
A nurse named Jamie set up a bed in the living room.
Machines hummed.
Medication charts went on the refrigerator.
At night, I heard him getting sick in the bathroom, then turning on the faucet so I wouldn’t hear.
The night before he died, he told everyone to leave.
Even Jamie.
Then he slowly made his way into my room and lowered himself into the chair beside my bed.
“Hey, kid,” he said.
“Hey,” I answered, already crying.
He reached for my hand.
“You know you were the best thing that ever happened to me, right?”
“That’s kind of sad,” I joked weakly.
He laughed, but it broke halfway through.
“Still true.”
“I don’t know what to do without you,” I whispered.
His eyes filled with tears.
“You’re going to live,” he said. “You hear me? You’re going to live.”
“I’m scared.”
“I know,” he said. “Me too.”
Then his face changed.
Like there was something sitting behind his eyes.
Something heavy.
Something old.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
“For what?”
His hand tightened around mine.
“For things your uncle should have told you a long time ago.”
My chest went cold.
“What things?”
He opened his mouth like he wanted to answer.
But he only shook his head.
Then he leaned forward and kissed my forehead.
“Goodnight, Emily.”
He died the next morning.
The memorial service was black clothes, bad coffee, and people saying, “He was a good man,” like that could possibly explain what losing him felt like
hen I came home, the house felt wrong.
His boots were still by the door.
His mug was still in the sink.
The basil hung in the window, untouched.
That afternoon, Mrs. Patel knocked once and came inside.
Her eyes were red.
Her hands were shaking.
She sat on the edge of my bed and placed an envelope in my lap.
“Your uncle asked me to give you this,” she said.
I stared at it.
My name was written across the front in Nathan’s rough handwriting.
Emily.
“And he asked me to tell you he was sorry,” Mrs. Patel continued.
My throat tightened.
“Sorry for what?”
She looked away.
“And that… I’m sorry too.”
My blood went cold.
“Mrs. Patel, what does that mean?”
She shook her head, tears sliding down her face.
