Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 98048 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 490(@200wpm)___ 392(@250wpm)___ 327(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98048 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 490(@200wpm)___ 392(@250wpm)___ 327(@300wpm)
Typical. “I’ll make sure to tell him you said so.”
Some wandering cousins glimpse us around the corner and look as though they might find a reason to come talk to me, so I grab Evan by the lapel and shove him toward the laundry room. I press myself up against the doorframe, then check to make sure the coast is clear.
“I can’t get hijacked into another conversation about how much I remind people of my mom,” I groan. “Like, dude, the last time you saw me, I still wasn’t eating solid food.”
Evan adjusts his tie again. “They think they’re helping.”
“Well, they’re not.”
Everyone wants to tell me what a great lady Mom was and how important family was to her. It’s almost creepy, hearing people talk about a woman who bears no resemblance to the person I knew.
“How you holding up?” he asks roughly. “Like, really?”
I shrug in return. Because that’s the question, isn’t it? I’ve been asked it a dozen different ways over the past couple days, and I still don’t have a proper answer. Or at least, not the one people want to hear.
“I’m not sure I feel anything. I don’t know. Maybe I’m still in shock or something. You always expect these things to happen in a split second, or over months and months. This, though? It was like just the wrong amount of warning. I came home, and a week later she was dead.”
“I get that,” he says. “Barely time to get your bearings before it’s over.”
“I haven’t known which way is up for days.” I bite my lip. “I’m starting to wonder if there’s something wrong with me?”
He fixes me with a disbelieving scowl. “It’s death, Fred. There’s nothing wrong with you.”
I snort a laugh at his nickname for me. Been so long since I’ve heard it, I’d almost forgotten what it sounded like. There was a time when I answered to it more than my own name.
“Seriously, though. I keep waiting for the grief to hit, but it doesn’t come.”
“It’s hard to find a lot of emotion for a person who didn’t have a lot for you. Even if it’s your mom.” He pauses. “Maybe especially moms.”
“True.”
Evan gets it. He always has. One of the things we have in common is an unorthodox relationship with our mothers. In that there isn’t much relationship to speak of. While his mom is an impermanent idea in his life—absent except for the few times a year she breezes into town to sleep off a bender or ask for money—mine was absent in spirit if not in body. Mine was so cold and detached, even in my earliest memories, that she hardly seemed to exist at all. I grew up jealous of the flower beds she tended in the front yard.
“I’m almost relieved she’s gone.” A lump rises in my throat. “No, more than almost. That’s terrible to say, I know that. But it’s like … now I can stop trying, you know? Trying and then feeling like crap when it doesn’t change.”
My whole life I made efforts to connect with her. To figure out why my mother didn’t seem to like me much. I’d never gotten an answer. Maybe now I can stop asking.
“It’s not terrible,” Evan says. “Some people make shit parents. It’s not our fault they don’t know how to love us.”
Except for Craig—Mom certainly knew how to love him. After five failed attempts, she’d finally gotten the recipe right with him. Her one perfect son she could pour a lifetime of mothering into. I love my little brother, but he and I might as well have been raised by two different people. He’s the only one of us walking around here with red, swollen eyes.
“Can I tell you something?” Evan says with a grin that makes me suspicious. “But you have to promise not to hit me.”
“Yeah, I can’t do that.”
He laughs to himself and licks his lips. An involuntary habit that always drove me crazy, because I know what that mouth is capable of.
“I missed you,” he confesses. “Am I an asshole if I’m sort of glad someone died?”
I punch him in the shoulder, to which he feigns injury. He doesn’t mean it. Not really. But in a weird way I appreciate the sentiment, if only because it gives me permission to smile for a second or two. To breathe.
I toy with the thin silver bracelet circling my wrist. Not quite meeting his eyes. “I missed you too. A little.”
“A little?” He’s mocking me.
“Just a little.”
“Mmm-mmm. So you thought about me, what, once, twice a day when you were gone?”
“More like once or twice total.”
He chuckles.
Truthfully, after I left the Bay I spent months doing my best to push away the thoughts of him when they insisted their way forward. Refusing the images that came when I closed my eyes at night or went on a date. Eventually it got easier. I’d almost managed to forget him. Almost.