Malia quietly slunk out of her seat at the table and joined Addy where she’d disappeared onto the deck, leaving me to have the long-awaited, candid conversation with my mother.
“He’s been gone for over twenty years.”
“I know.” I frowned. “But I still feel like the door might swing open and he’ll walk right back through it.”
Her tired eyes glossed over. “I used to think that too,” she murmured. “But we can’t live that way, right? I don’t want to spend the next twenty years looking at the front door.”
My chest tightened painfully.
I did want her to live comfortably. To be taken care of, and enjoy every second of every day because she deserved nothing less than everything my sister and I could give to her. I wanted her to go out to the beach, and join clubs, and read books, and plant flowers in the backyard so she could drink her coffee on the deck in the morning and look out at them. I needed that for my own well-being, clarity, consciousness. Leaving Florida was never going to happen if that didn’t happen first.
“I only want you to be happy.” I swallowed my pride.
She reached back and held hands with a silent, reverential Charlie. “I am happy, Frankie. I am very happy. More so than I have been in years, and I will never take your sacrifices for our family for granted.”
“It was never a sacrifice.” I stood, pulling her into a long, tight embrace. “Just love.”
My body relaxed, remembering to inhale and exhale again, the emotions of the day rolling once more in an ever-changing tide. I felt seasick. The hurt still lingered, but it was bandaged enough for the time being.
Charlie stood with us, waiting patiently behind my mother. With gratitude and a subtle apology, I offered him my hand.
“How many people do you think I’ve killed, Charlie?” I asked.
His lips curled into an appreciative smile. “Let’s hope I never find out.”
“All right, then.” I kissed Mom on the head. “Now help my mother clean this up. I have some flowers to plant.”
“Is the nameless girl following you out West?”
I smeared the dirt off my hands and onto my jeans. Black dust had weaseled all the way under my fingernails and into the pores of my skin. I’d need a shower for the first layer and a Brillo pad for the residual mess.
Adriana climbed the short hill to the garden with two beers in hand, the lights from the house and the hazy coral backdrop of evening the only two things still illuminating my workspace. It had dropped down to a temperature that penetrated my thin T-shirt and made the sweat cool against my skin.
“I’d be following her,” I confessed, grabbing the bottle and taking a long swig. “She’s from Colorado.”
“No shit.” Addy said. “You’re going, then.”
“I didn’t say that.”
She plopped down on the grassy area beside the holes I’d dug out and started primping flower petals. “Why not?”
“What, are you sick of me? You see me once in three months and you’re already trying to send me across the country.”
“What’s the difference between here and Colorado Springs if we already see you so little?” She tilted her head and snatched the small shovel out of my hand as I tried to start digging again.
“I can’t take care of the things I need to when I’m two thousand miles away.”
“What are you even talking about?” She threw her head back and lay in the lawn, wild blue tendrils of hair splaying out over the green. “Look around, brother dearest, everything is better than ever. The garden is taken care of, the house is painted, the gutters are replaced, the toilet in the fucking basement doesn’t gurgle when you flush it anymore. That envelope of money you mail over here every month? In a little safe in Mom’s room, untouched.”
“That’s her money to do whatever she wants with.” I pierced a shearing knife into the dirt and rolled over next to Addy, both of us staring up at the pockets of constellations brightening with the looming sunset.
“Charlie had the cameras installed so she would feel safer alone in the house all the time. He’s good for her, Frankie.”
I closed my eyes and inhaled the sweet scent of flowers. Each deep breath felt more and more like a release of tension I’d been storing for longer than I thought possible. Years’ worth of worry and resentment, blame I’d placed on myself for the shit luck I’d had in my life until recently. Until I let myself start feeling worthy of something more again.
Until Ophelia.
“Why didn’t anyone tell me?” I complained. “Now I look like a fucking loose cannon.”
“I don’t think that was avoidable; it’s part of the reason we put it off for so long. It was gonna be a shitshow one way or another.”
“I need fucking honesty, Adriana.” I released another aggravated breath.
Her hand looped with mine in the grass. “We know.”
“Too much change is happening right now. I’m trying to catch up but it feels like…” I paused. “You know what running feels like in your dreams?”
“Yeah.” She giggled.
“That’s it. I’m trying to keep up with everyone going in a hundred different directions, but my legs won’t move. They want to, I’m kicking, but some weird outside force I can’t fight is keeping me in the same place.”
“It’s the protector instinct.” She squeezed my hand. “You’ve been the man of the house for longer than Dad was at this point. That’s not an easy torch to pass, especially to someone you don’t know.” A beat passed. “Look at me.”
We both turned our heads in unison.
“Would I ever let someone I didn’t think was worthy of Mom into our lives?”
I sighed. “No.”
“Exactly. I don’t know if you know this, but you are one scary motherfucker when you want to be.”
I cracked a reluctant smile. “Shut up.”
“Literally no one could fill your shoes, Frankie, you are too good. You’re the best person I’ve ever met. Selfless, loyal, humble, hardworking—funny.” That last word came out under her breath. “But you need to be all of those things for you, not for us anymore.”
“What does that mean?” I snorted.
“Go to Colorado.”
I swallowed the challenge bubbling in my throat. “What if it’s the wrong choice?”
“You would have never even gone out there for an interview in the first place if you thought that.”
We both sat up again, staring down the hill at the silhouettes of Mom and Charlie moving about in the kitchen through the windows. Malia stood close by laughing at something animated he was describing with his hands as Mom smiled into the sudsy sink.
“They have to know.” I gestured to Malia before turning back toward my sister.
“I think Mom is just waiting for me to say it first,” Addy admitted. “She hasn’t given a random guy at the deli counter my number since Malia started coming around.”
“Quite the matchmaker.”
“Apparently not.” She grinned, her teeth bright against the darkening curtain of night. “I have friends with teenage children, Frankie.” Her eyes widened and she shook me playfully. “Teenagers!”