Priya slams the breaks and the car jerks forward before settling to a stop on the quiet cul-de-sac. Once in park, Priya sighs with relief. Her shoulders ease down from where they’ve been hunched up by her ears for the forty-five-minute drive on a five-lane highway to Peachtree City, a leafy suburb south of Atlanta.
I stare out the passenger window at the house. I’ve never pictured what kind of house Finn grew up in. I always thought of us as the same—lacking in parents, lacking a home, rootless—but the stately two-story white brick colonial in front of us is proof that Finn does have a family. And they rejected him. My hands ball into fists in my lap as I survey the house. There’s a light on in the front room.
“I don’t know if I can go in,” Finn says from the back seat. His voice is shaky. “Maybe this was a mistake.”
“Do you want me to make a loop around the neighborhood while you decide?” Priya offers. Her shoulders creep up at the prospect of turning the car back on.
“Can we just sit here for a minute?” Finn asks.
“We can sit here all night if you want,” Theo offers. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”
twenty
Finn
Christmas #10, 2017
I wake with my head on Theo’s shoulder. There’s a crusted track of drool down my chin and my neck screams from sleeping at a weird angle.
My phone says it’s 6:04. I didn’t mean to stay outside all night; I only wanted a few minutes to compose myself, because once I go inside it will be real. My father will be dead, and I’ll be face-to-face with my mother for the first time in nine years.
I open and close the car door as gently as I can, so I don’t wake anyone. Up front, Priya is reclined in the driver’s seat with her wrinkled purple coat draped over herself like a blanket, while Hannah’s face is squished against the passenger window. Gratitude surges through me. No matter what happens inside, these people, the ones sleeping uncomfortably in this monstrosity of a car, are my real family.
For a moment, I stare at the house. To the right of the walkway is the happy willow. Willow trees only weep near water, so ours stands tall and broad, casting the front of the house in a welcome shade from Georgia’s sweltering sun. The tree was always base when I played tag with the other neighborhood kids. It’s taller since I left.
At the door, I freeze. I don’t have a key—mine was abandoned in a junk drawer two apartments ago. I didn’t think to keep it because I never expected to come back. It’s not rational, but I never considered the possibility my dad could die. I assumed he might live forever; the bad guys always do. When I lived here, he ran five miles every weekday morning, even in the hottest part of summer, and hadn’t touched bread since the Atkin’s craze in the nineties.
I don’t want to wake anyone with the bell, so I try the doorknob. To my surprise, it’s unlocked. I step into the foyer and breathe in the smell of Pine Sol and the white gardenia candles my mother favors. It smells like home.
“Finn, is that you?” my mother calls from closer than I expected, not upstairs in her bedroom. She’s in the living room, the one we only use for company, lying on the slipcovered white couch underneath a hand-crocheted blanket made by her own mother, who died when I was eleven. My grandmother’s was the first and only funeral I’ve ever been to. Until now, I guess.
“Hi. It’s me.” I stand in the doorway to the living room surveying my mother. Her hair has started to go gray, I notice. I’m surprised she doesn’t color it. She always cared so much about appearances. I wonder if I should give her a hug. I realize, too late, that when Amanda called with the news it wasn’t accompanied by an invitation. I just showed up. Maybe my mother doesn’t want me here.
At the sight of me, tears start streaming down her cheeks. I don’t know the protocol for this situation. “I’m sorry about Dad,” I say. This loss feels more hers than mine.
“I’m not crying about your father. It still doesn’t feel real. I’m crying because you’re finally home where you belong. Now come here.” She beckons me to the couch. “I need to hug my boy.”
I sit down next to her, and she wraps me in her arms, my head automatically nestles into her shoulder. I can smell her Jo Malone perfume, the same kind she’s always worn.
“What are you doing down here?” I ask.
“I could ask you the same question. I heard you pull up in that monster truck out there last night and I’ve been waiting for you to come in ever since.”
“I needed a minute. And then, I guess I fell asleep.”
“I did, too,” she says, and I’m not sure if she means that she needed a minute or fell asleep.
“How about I make us some coffee?” she offers.
* * *
? ? ?
?I’m sitting on a stool at the kitchen island with my second cup of coffee as my mother dictates a list of everyone we need to call with the news. When to call is an etiquette quandary she doesn’t have an answer for. After ten, she decides. People will sleep in the day after a holiday, and she wouldn’t want to inconvenience anyone with the untimely death of her husband.
The list is going on three pages: co-workers, golf partners, distant relatives, college roommates, credit card companies, and the insurance broker. I never realized death required so much admin. I naively assumed you placed an obituary and the funeral home did the rest. My heart breaks for Hannah who had to do this as a teenager, not once, but twice.
“What do I say if they ask how he died?” Amanda didn’t give any specifics between tearful gasps when she called with the news.
“Holiday heart,” she says, like it should mean something to me. It sounds like the name of a Hallmark movie she’d probably enjoy.
“What’s that?”
“The doctor said it’s common, fifth one he saw yesterday.”
“That’s a pretty callous way to break the news,” I interject.
“He said people eat and drink more than usual over the holidays and their hearts can’t take it and it leads to heart attacks. Amanda googled it in the car, Christmas Day and New Year’s Day have the highest incidence of heart attacks out of the whole year.” She sounds numb, like she’s relaying the plotline on an episode of Grey’s Anatomy and not discussing something that happened to her husband of thirty-five years. At her lack of emotion, I wonder what their marriage was like during the decade of my exile. I wonder if she’ll miss him, or if, like me, maybe she’s the tiniest bit relieved to be free of him.
“But Dad was so healthy,” I counter.
“He was getting older.” She reaches for her cell phone and pulls up a picture of Dad with Amanda. “This was Thanksgiving.”
I pull the phone closer to inspect the photo. His Georgia Tech polo strains across his bulging belly, and his hair is thinning. He adopted a bad comb-over to try and hide it. This man, who is obviously my father, looks nothing like the image I’ve been carrying around in my head. It’s not like he was on Facebook, and no one sent me any family photos to update my mental image. He looks old, like exactly the sort of person who might drop dead of a heart attack.
A knock at the door interrupts our conversation.