West Virginia looks exactly as it always has.

In the three years since I started at Jade Mountain, I have rarely come back here. For one, basketball season has kept me so busy through the holidays that I haven’t even come home for Thanksgiving or Christmas. And two, my mother wouldn’t really recognize the significance of me coming home even if I had. So, I’ve chosen to stay away.

It’s not “almost heaven,” like the song says, and I don’t belong here. Nope, for me this state, this town, has always been some dusty country road and nothing more.

I round my car onto Main Street, hitting one of the only three stoplights in town.

Eloise is quiet in the passenger seat next to me, her eyes fixated out the window.

“Isn’t much, huh?” I squeeze her hand where it lays on my thigh.

Slowly, her blue eyes turn to me. “Seeing this place, the place that built you … I’m getting a much clearer picture of how you’ve become who you are today. Don’t discount that, Colton.”

How did she always have a way of putting things so perfectly?

“I got out of this town as soon as I could. But I guess you can drag the boy away from the river, but you can’t drag the river out of the boy.”

My thoughts are as cloudy and dark as the muddy river that runs beside the road, the disgusting piece of water that cuts this town in half and marks just how dirt poor its residents are. For so long I’d wanted out, to run as fast as I could toward something brighter than the dull existence this place left marked on your soul. And I’d been so close, come just far enough to almost touch the sun. But the mark of second class was ingrained in me, and so I’d acted on it. And ruined everything.

“You will play basketball again. It might not be in the context you’d like it, but you were born to be a star, anyone can see it.” Eloise tilts her head to the side, resting it on the seat while she gazes at me.

Leaving Jade Mountain for the last time seemed surreal. I’d walked around campus in the early hours of the morning, after almost all of the students had gone home for summer break or it was too early for the last remaining stragglers to drag themselves from their hangovers. The campus had been my kingdom for three years; I was their king and I’d been worshipped like one. Yet, in the matter of twenty-four hours, everyone had turned against me.

No, not turned against me. Forgotten about me, and that was immeasurably worse.

I’d catalogued every sense; the feel of the early morning chill, the look of the lake, the mountain mirrored in it. The scent of fresh dew and the mountain fog, settling over the ground like a blanket. The chirp of the birds and honks of geese, coming back for the summer. I ran my hands over the railings, the bricks … this was the place that built me into a man. A huge sadness had settled over me then, knowing that this chapter of my life was definitively over.

And now I had to return home, to do one of the hardest things I would ever have to do in my life. Even harder than coming clean, even harder than giving the interview that exposed every vulnerability of my life.

“Try not to expect anything. Either way, you’re going to see her, so don’t give too much thought until we are there.” Eloise seemingly reads my thoughts.

“It’s been a long time since I actually saw her. Will she even know who I am?” I grip the steering wheel harder as I turn onto the street where my mother’s house is located.

“Joelle said she does, says she asks about you and watches your games sometimes. It’s going to be hard for everyone, Colton, just take a deep breath.”

I suck in air, listening to her voice only and following its instructions. Pulling up slowly, I park in the street, not daring to do anything but look straight ahead.

“I love you.” Eloise’s voice is warm, and finally I can twist my neck.

The split-level where I spent my childhood stands a hundred yards back off the street, nothing special about it. “I thought memories would come spilling back, but … this isn’t where I had many memories. Thankfully, all of my best ones are from college.”

She grabs my hand. “It doesn’t have to hold any significance for you. That is okay, you know that, right? A year ago, my father shot a documentary on his life and we went back to our old apartment in Liverpool … I thought it would destroy me. But … I didn’t feel anything, surprisingly. You can build the memories that are important to you, that’s what I learned.”

I palm her cheek, needing to feel her lips. Suddenly my body is charged with heat, and I capture those full lips, my hands tangling in her silky blond hair. Eloise meets me, submitting to my desire and control. My tongue laps at hers, delving deep into her mouth. I use her body as my medicine, immersing myself in the kiss as a balm to my frayed nerves.

Pulling back, I press my forehead to hers. “Okay, I think I can get out of the car now.

I don’t say I’m ready, because who is ever ready to commit their mother to an institution? What kind of child would I be if I said I was happy about this decision?

We get out of the car and head up the driveway, and I try not to study the van with the county institution logo on the side sitting so close to my mother’s house. As I open the door, the stench of sickness hits me full force in the nose. Stale urine, medical supplies, and something sterile combine for a nauseating scent that makes me want to run back to the car and drive as fast as I can away from this place.

“Colton, thanks for coming.” Joelle approaches me, giving me an awkward hug.

I pat her back. “Of course I’d be here, thanks for setting it up. How is she?”

I don’t see my mother in the living room, and I suck in another deep breath as Eloise squeezes my hand.

“It’s not a good day. But we can’t postpone any longer, and they won’t intake her if we don’t move her today, so …” Her face contorts into an expression of reluctance.

“No, I know. It was always going to be a fifty-fifty chance of a good day or bad day.” I nod, trying to convince myself of that.

My head towers over her, and I feel too big here. I eclipse this house now, and I realize I’ve outgrown it both physically and mentally. After my prospects of playing professional basketball went up in flames, I knew that I had to commit my mother to the state facility I’d been killing myself to try and avoid for her. I had no more money to spend on expensive nurses or at-home treatments. And with no future set up, and having cut myself off from the lifestyle I’d had with Mac, there was no money coming in. She was far gone enough that they’d take her now, and I would only have to pay a minimal fee for her to receive care there for the foreseeable future.

“Mr. Reiter?” A woman in a business casual outfit walks toward me, and a male nurse stands just behind her.

“Yes, hi …” I extend a hand, feeling awkwardly formal and adult.

Having a mother like mine forced you to grow up quickly, from a young age. Even now, with some of the things I had to deal with in accordance to her disorder, I felt like a five-year-old taking a business meeting that I wasn’t supposed to be in.

“I’m Mary, the case worker who will be looking over your mother in transport and then when she arrives at our facility. This is Keith, the nurse who will be helping to keep her calm throughout this process. Once we start, things are going to move fast as your mother will probably become highly agitated, so I just want to prepare you as best I can.”

Her mouth moves faster than her words hit my ears, and I know that I have to remain in this fog-like state to have any hope of getting through this. She talks about the process, about paperwork and transport details. About my mother’s intake and seventy-two-hour examination period. About her residence, and filing for power of attorney. All words and descriptions that seem, again, too adult for me, too soon.

I should have more time before I have to watch my mother deteriorate. I should have had a full life with her, shouldn’t have to bear caring for the person who was always supposed to take care of me. Not this early, at least.

And then they usher me up the small flight of stairs to the hallway, the one I know leads to the last room I want to step into.

The light is muted as I walk in, the dust falling in lines through the air. It looks as it always did; dull peach carpet, simple bed with no headboard and a white lacy comforter, furniture that looked, and was, like it was out of the nineteen eighties. The mirrored vanity that held perfume bottles, the ones I’d sniff as she got ready to go out to one bar or another, too little to realize she should be home, helping me with my homework.

She sits at the end of the bed, staring out into space at nothing. Her frame is thinner, much thinner, than the last time I saw her with my own two eyes. Wrinkled skin, not that of a fifty-year-old, and tattered hair … she looks nothing like the smiling woman in our family photos, of just her and I, of yesteryear.

Walking to her, I kneel down so that I can look her in the eyes, or to see if she’ll acknowledge me.

The same blue-green eyes that I see when I look in a mirror take me in, her mouth contorting in a confused expression. She begins to nod, and I have to bite my tongue to keep from crying. She’s deteriorated so badly since I’ve been away, I could slap myself for being so selfish.

“It’s time to go, baby?” She looks so helpless, frail and small like a child who has just heard the news that takes their innocence from them forever.

I hold her hand and swallow the knot of emotion clawing its way up my throat. “Yes, Mom, it’s time to go.”