Ben didn’t smile.
I actually got annoyed with him.
“Your uncle is trying to help. Stop following him everywhere.”
Ben lowered his head.
“Okay, Mom.”
That night, he slept outside Grandma’s door again.
A few days later, at around four in the morning, I woke to the sound of whispering in the hallway.
I opened my bedroom door.
Ben was lying beneath his blanket, but he wasn’t asleep.
His eyes were fixed on Grandma’s door.
Then I heard him say:
“I’m not going to sleep tonight.”
He paused.
Then he whispered:
“I won’t let Uncle Mark do that to Grandma again.”
My blood ran cold.
“Ben?”
He jumped.
I hurried over and knelt beside him.
“What does Uncle Mark do to Grandma?”
Ben’s eyes filled with tears.
He looked at the closed bedroom door.
Then he said:
“Mom, if I tell you, Uncle Mark is going to get really mad.”
“Tell me.”
Ben leaned toward my ear.
And whispered one sentence.
At first, I wasn’t even sure I had heard him correctly.
“What did you say?”
He repeated it.
This time, I had to put my hand against the wall.
Because at that moment, I realized two things.
First, my son hadn’t been sleeping outside that door for weeks because he was afraid of losing his grandmother.
He had been standing guard.
And second, if what Ben had just told me was true, my brother hadn’t been coming to our house every day to help my mother.
And whatever he had been doing inside her bedroom might already have gone too far to stop.
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Ben repeated it more slowly the second time.
“Uncle Mark waits until Grandma is really sleepy. Then he brings papers into her room and tells her to sign them.”
For several seconds, I said nothing.
“What papers?”
“I don’t know.”
Ben wiped his eyes.
“I saw it by accident the first time.”
He told me that about a week earlier, he had gotten up during the night to get some water.
Grandma’s bedroom door had been partly open.
Mark was sitting on the edge of her bed.
There was a thick stack of papers in his hands.
My mother looked exhausted and could barely keep her eyes open.
Ben had heard her ask:
“Mark, what am I signing?”
My brother replied:
“They’re just regular hospital papers. Just sign them.”
But Ben hadn’t walked away.
He had stayed behind the door.
And he had watched Mark turn the pages one by one, pointing to the places where Mom needed to sign.
