“Okay then. Just until dinner, though.” They were gone before Kel could finish the sentence. I was thoroughly convinced kids under ten years old had two speeds: zero and Mach 1.
“Those girls wear me out,” Dad grunted, his voice saying he wouldn’t have it any other way. He popped a beer and drank deeply. We couldn’t let him have more than two drinks—otherwise it might interfere with his medications—but sometimes he managed to sneak a third.
Spring continued to be sprung around us. The birds were back, and the very last of the snow was finally melting in the deepest patches of shade.
“Can’t believe she’s gone,” Dad said finally. We nodded. Mary had just been by to visit him the week before. She’d taken to stopping in regularly after our mother’s life-ending stroke. By then, Mary’s husband, Daniel, had been gone a few years as well. A part of me had wondered if she and my dad would get together in their twilight years. Some boyish part that always wanted to call Mary Shelby Mom. I never asked Kel if she had the same thought, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if she did. “Here’s to her,” Dad said, holding his bottle out.
We clinked ours with his and drank. I flipped the steaks.
“Makes you think,” Dad said quietly, looking down at the deepening green of the lawn between his feet. “Life’s so precarious. Easy to slip off the mountain. Doesn’t take anything at all. That’s why you have to drink moments in.” He looked at us, none of the confusion there that sometimes clouded his eyes. “I’m thankful for this. For the grass and the breeze and the sun and the shade to sit in. I’m thankful for this cold beer and the way those girls inside giggle, and for sitting here with my kids. Things are gonna change, but nothing will change this. Nothing will change the way I feel now.”
Kel’s eyes were shining, and the coal was back in my throat. We hugged Dad. He hugged us back. The steaks were done.
After dinner, I walked Kel to her car and helped get the girls buckled in. “As shitty as today was, tonight was pretty nice,” she said after I’d shut the back door on the girls’ laughter.
“Yes, it was. Same next weekend?”
“Sure.” She surprised me by hugging me hard. My little sister was normally as levelheaded as they came. She sat behind the counter at the local DMV for forty hours a week and listened to countless people piss and moan about paperwork and wait times and blah blah blah and didn’t bat an eye. She’d taken Mark’s cheating and their subsequent divorce in stride, only breaking down when Alicia had asked if she was divorcing her too. She’d been the rock of our family after Emma’s and our mother’s deaths, but now I could hear a strain in her voice as she spoke in my ear. “Thank you for taking care of him. I didn’t know how I’d manage it with the girls and work. Thank you for coming home.”
“It was easy to leave an empty apartment and the plants I kept killing,” I said. She laughed and let me go. “I’m happy I can be here.”
“We’ll get through this, right? We’ll take care of him?”
“Absolutely.”
“Okay. Next weekend, then.”
“Next weekend.”
She was half in the driver’s seat when she paused. “And leave the thing with Mary alone, okay? You’re only going to torture yourself.”
I told her I would. And I did.
For a while.
5
I dream of your wedding sometimes when I’m feeling especially strong.
It’s a cool March day, because you loved early spring more than any other time of year. You said the air was clearer then, for better atmospheric observation. I believed you because you were always smarter than me.
You’re twenty-three or twenty-four, just graduated from the college of your choice, and that’s where you met her. She was in your second-year chem class. All alone at a big table, so you went and sat by her. Her name was Amy or Charli. You knew she was special from the start.
You brought her home for Christmas, and of course our mother was stoic and cold to both of you, but the rest of us made up for it. We sang carols and got drunk in front of the fireplace and opened gifts. We told her she was one of us. You proposed that night.
When you come down the aisle holding Dad’s arm, you couldn’t be more beautiful. You’re both trying not to cry, but I see a tear leak from Dad’s eye as he kisses your cheek and hands you off to Amy or Charli. Kel’s up there as a bridesmaid, and Emmy is the ring bearer, Alicia the flower girl.