by Brooks, Abby
As the cab pulled up in front of the resort that was once my home, the familiar view woke something warm and sharp in my heart. Leaving Dad was a necessity, but it went against everything we were taught to value. Being home again felt like I was finally doing my duty, while the child inside me begged to climb back in the cab and disappear. Instead, I paid the driver and unfolded myself from the car, smiling at the white wraparound porch. Palm trees shaded the grass. Ferns drooped from dangling containers. The ocean stretched out forever behind it all.
For all the familiarity, I walked up to the front door with bags on my arms and suitcases trundling behind me, like so many tourists over so many years. The Hut wasn’t home anymore, and I was just another person who would come and then go.
The front door swung open. “No shit! Look who made it.” Wyatt’s wide grin was contagious, his light blue eyes standing out like sea glass in his tan face. He stomped out of the house and wrapped me in a hug, thumping me on the back. “It’s good to see you.”
I did my best to return the hug around my luggage. “You too, brother. You too.”
“Everyone’s inside already.” Wyatt indicated the house with a jerk of his chin as my mother appeared in the doorway.
Her once red hair was now streaked with gray, though still long and thick and gathered in a braid that fell over her shoulder. Her eyes, the same light blue as Wyatt’s, lit up when she saw me, though her cheeks were tear-stained and her smile was sad. “Is that my Lucas?” She pushed through the door with wide arms. I dropped my bags and tucked her against my body. She hugged me like it might be the last time she ever had the chance, a habit she picked up after what happened in Afghanistan.
“Hi, Mom. How are you holding up?”
“I’ve had good days and bad days.” She pulled back enough to look me in the face. “More good days than bad, though.” My mother, the eternal optimist. “Come on in. Everyone’s here and it’s been too long since I had all my people in the same place at the same time.”
A look crossed her face, and I wondered if she realized what she said. I stopped thinking of Dad as one of my people a long time ago, too. She led me through the door and my heart stood still. Nothing had changed and I didn’t know how to feel about that. Some of the magic from the early years shone from the familiar walls, though fear and anxiety still lurked in the corners. I dropped my bags in the front room and followed Mom into the kitchen, Wyatt trailing close behind.
My brothers and sister waited for me in the dining room, seated around our old oak table. Harlow’s long hair, so blonde it was almost white, sparkled in the sunlight falling through the window. She tapped her fingers against the table, a tattoo barely visible on her wrist. Eli, his hair darkened with age, fiddled with a glass. Caleb had his hands tucked behind his head and was staring through a window at the water.
No one spoke and I couldn’t tell if the silence was comfortable or awkward or for how long they’d been like that. In years past, the room would have bubbled with conversation and good-natured teasing. Harlow would have been drawing, or writing, or playing her guitar while Eli chattered at whoever would listen, with Caleb adding commentary whenever Eli came up for a breath. Finding them this quiet was like walking in on someone else’s family.
Wyatt, his personality a carbon copy of Mom’s, stepped past me. “Look who I found.” He gestured my way as if presenting a unicorn.
My siblings dropped the quiet act. The sounds of chairs scraping against the wood floor filled the room and they surrounded me with hugs and greetings. Harlow tried to apologize for never coming to see me and I reminded her that I understood.
“Quit cutting her so much slack,” Eli said, shaking his head and rolling his eyes. “How’s she supposed to learn if you never call her on her bullshit?”
Harlow made a face. “Hello, pot. Meet kettle? Which one of us needs called on their bullshit again?”
“How’s the leg?” Caleb asked, stepping forward, arms open. “Still more metal than man?”
I wrapped him in a hug. “For the life of me, I’ll never understand why you guys go on like it’s a big deal to have shrapnel in your ass.”
Wyatt laughed. “Uh. Newsflash. It is a big deal to walk around with shrapnel in your ass.”
I gave them a rundown of my healing process—keeping it short and sweet because I didn’t need much more than time at this point.
“What are you doing now that you’re not a big, bad Marine?” Harlow folded her arms across her chest and gave me a onceover. Her perceptive eyes locked on mine and I knew she saw that I was hiding how lost I felt. Harlow always saw. My sister collected people’s stories and catalogued their reactions. A version of this conversation would end up in one of her books and somewhere down the line, I’d have the uncomfortable opportunity to confront myself, the way my sister saw me.
Wyatt dropped a hand on her shoulder then plopped into a chair. “You know what they say. Once a Marine, always a Marine.”
I shook my head and filled them in on my life since being released from the hospital, then turned the question around on them. Wyatt had taken over running the resort. Harlow was living in Seattle and still trying to finish her first novel. Eli was working at a bar and had dreams of opening his own—though given our family’s history with alcohol, I wasn’t sure I understood why. Caleb took tourists out on boats for fishing and exploring. Everyone professed to being happy, but the light I was used to seeing in their eyes had dimmed. It was like looking at a faded photograph. I wondered if they would say the same thing about me.
Was losing the light a natural side effect of growing up? Was the reality of life destined to dull even the brightest soul? Or was this something specific to the Huttons? After all, we’d started out living the dream, only to grow up and meet a monster wearing our father’s skin.
We gathered around the table, each of us naturally pulling out the chairs where we sat when we were younger. Slowly, as we talked, things started to feel like they used to. Harlow spun stories so magnificent you couldn’t tell where truth ended and fantasy began. Eli poked holes in her logic. Caleb watched thoughtfully.
“You should come with me the next time I take the boat out,” Caleb said to her.
Harlow wrinkled her nose. “And smell like worms the rest of the day? No thank you.”
Caleb shrugged. “Just sayin’. With fish stories like that, you belong out there more than I do.”
“Be careful.” She pointed a finger his way. “You keep going on like that and I’ll kill you off in my next book. Just ask Luc.” My sister had written me into, and killed me off in, more unfinished stories than I could remember.
I leveled her with a glare. “Sure. And maybe this’ll be the one you finish.”
“Hey!” she cried, sitting up to swat me on my arm. “Maybe I will.”
Mom sat and listened, adding exclamations and laughing when we teased each other. I caught her eye and cocked my head, silently asking if she was okay. She took a breath. Her eyes wandered across the faces of her children. She put her hand to her heart and smiled.
Chapter Nine
Cat
I woke up hours after I was used to on a typical Tuesday morning, but also hours before I was ready to be awake. Chris wasn’t lying when he said he was a terrible roommate. Not only did he keep right on drinking way past my limit, but he also passed out and started snoring on the couch without explaining sleeping arrangements.
Not wanting to commandeer his bed, I tried to sleep tucked into the armchair. Too many margaritas allowed that to work for a while, but I was sober enough after waking up to realize how uncomfortable I was. I snagged a bottle of water out of the otherwise empty fridge and considered making a pot of coffee.
Given the amount of noise coming from Chris’ general location, I doubted the hiss and slurp of a coffee pot would wake him, but I didn’t want to risk dragging him back to consciousness. I wasn’t in the mood for his particular brand of ‘handling problems.’
I slunk on
to the patio, squinting against the early afternoon sun. At home, I would sit on the deck and watch the ocean when I was stressed—though the sooner I stopped thinking of Nash’s place as home, the better off I’d be. Here, I’d have to settle for staring at the burnt grass in the courtyard of the apartment complex while the heat of summer in Texas pushed down on my body.
I stretched in the open air as bits and pieces of my margarita fueled tirade to Mr. X filtered through my memory.
Did I really do that?
Did I really feel compelled to reach out and tell that guy what’s what?
I checked my phone and blushed from head to toe. I most definitely did email Mr. X last night and he most definitely responded. At least I had the presence of mind to create a new email account so he couldn’t track me down and chop me into bits. I opened the emails and read through them.
If you’d opened that book and found you inside, you’d have read it, too…
I devoured your words like a greedy little boy. If I had it to do over again, I’d savor each and every page. I’d read and reread it all until I knew all of you. And when you got back to the coffee shop, I’d still be there, waiting…for you.
He sure knew how to say all the right things. It was a shame he wasn’t a real person.
I had to laugh at that thought. Of course Mr. X was a real person. Obviously, a human made the note in my journal. Also obviously, a human took the time to respond to my email. What I meant was that he wasn’t being real. He was nothing more than words on a screen. No name. No face. He could be whoever he wanted and after reading my deepest thoughts, of course he knew how to be everything I needed.
The urge to talk to someone beat against my brain. For a split second, I considered replying to his email, but that nonsense needed to stop. Immediately. The last thing I needed to add to my list of tragedies was getting myself kidnapped by a stranger with an email address and the propensity to snoop.
My phone showed zero missed messages or waiting texts from Nash. If the bimbo in my bed wasn’t enough to tell me how he felt about me, his utter silence sealed the deal. I pulled up my contacts and almost called my dad, then at the last minute, decided to call Mom. She was breathless when she answered.
“Hey, kiddo! How goes it on this glorious Tuesday? It’s Tuesday, right? I swear, time doesn’t mean anything anymore.”
“Yeah Momma, it’s Tuesday. And it goes not so gloriously.” I filled her in on all the details, though I left out the bit about the journal. In the scheme of things, that tangent felt inconsequential in comparison to being suddenly single, jobless, and homeless.
Mom sighed. “Oh, Cat.” Considering how much she didn’t like Nash, the sorrow in her voice took me off guard. “Are we happy or are we sad about this?”
That was a good question. One I didn’t know the answer to. I was sad, of course, but I hadn’t exactly spent the night in tears. But then again, I wasn’t exactly relieved, either. “I’d say we’re indignant.”
“Indignant is good. Only a fool would behave that way. Cheating is reprehensible.”
My mind stuck on the word fool, bringing up Mr. X’s words and bouncing them around the inside of my skull. “So I’ve heard,” I said. “And yes. It’s true. Only a fool.”
“What else? Talk to me, Katydid.”
I smiled at the nickname, Mom being the only one who ever used it. “I don’t know, Mom. I know you didn’t like him much…”
“But you did,” she said before I could finish, “and that’s what really matters.”
“Yeah…but…” I took a long breath and then filled her in on the last year with Nash. “And I just kept feeling so bored. I know he was good for me…”
“But was he?” she asked in that way of hers that meant she wanted me to think deeper than I was.
I sighed and then smiled when I realized what she was getting at. “If he was willing to cheat on me, I guess he really wasn’t all that good for me, huh?”
Mom made a sound that meant not really and then cleared her throat. “And if you’re feeling bored and underappreciated…”
I sniffed. “Okay, okay. Maybe he and I really weren’t all that great together.” I said the words as if they were an epiphany, but it felt more like stating hard truth and settled facts.
I loved Nash. Had since I was seventeen. And I believed he was going to do good things, even if one of those ‘good things’ was a strange woman with bodacious boobies. Dad’s face, stern yet loving, popped into my brain. That boy has a good head on his shoulders. The two of you together will make names for yourselves.
And I had believed him, too. But now, that part of my life was over and I oscillated between grief, anger, and resignation. And despite it all, this little buzz of excitement coursed low and hopeful through my body. I didn’t understand the feeling, but I kept finding myself smiling.
“So, what are you going to do?” Mom asked, echoing Chris’ question from last night.
“That’s the question of the hour, isn’t it? The truth is, I’m not really sure. I’m kind of in free fall here. No job. No home. I’ve got savings, so it won’t be hard to find an apartment. It just feels like there’s an opportunity here and that I shouldn’t act too quickly and squander it.”
“An opportunity for what?”
“For change,” I said before I even knew I knew the answer.
Mom laughed. “Well, you know how I feel about that ‘still-small voice.’”
I shifted in the chair, peeling my sweaty thighs off the plastic, and rolled my eyes. “I know enough to know that you don’t go around quoting scripture on the regular.”
“It’s a great quote, regardless where it came from. I’d be a fool not to use it. Anyway, you have to listen to that stuff. If there’s a part of you that’s whispering, you have to listen. Life is meant to be lived, not survived. If you’re not sure finding an apartment in Galveston is the right answer, then don’t do it.”
“Says the woman who lives in an RV.”
“Yes,” Mom said, emphatically. “That’s exactly my point. Why settle in one place when there’s a whole world to be experienced?”
“Or when you have a child to raise?” I asked the question without bitterness. I made peace with my mom and her nomadic ways a long time ago.
After my parents divorced, Mom won custody and I lived with her until I hit twelve, when she took off on her RV trip round the continent. Dad was more than happy to take me in and erase all the free-thinking she instilled in me and add his dose of sensible cynicism to the mix.
My childhood was split into thirds.
One spent with both of them.
One spent with my mom.
One spent with my dad.
I was a perfect blend of the two most opposite people in all the world.
“Can you imagine how your father would have reacted if I tried to take you with me?”
Honestly, I could. With lots of blustering, furrowed eyebrows, and proclamations that a child needed stability and security. But I let that subject pass, asking instead, “Why did you take off, anyway?”
I had asked the question over and over throughout the years, and the answer she gave me this time was no clearer than any of the rest. “You know how that still-small voice works.” She paused and then, “You know you always have a place with me. It’s cramped inside, but we have the whole wide world to spread out in. I’m parked in the Keys for a while and there’s a resort down here that’s hiring. Change of ownership or something. It’s been all over the news, though I don’t know or care why. Maybe they need a masseuse. Or maybe you don’t need a job quite yet and just need to remember what it feels like to live without all that material bullshit keeping you tethered to the ground.”
I rolled Mom’s statement around. Dad would reject it outright, and if I was being honest, part of me rejected it outright, too. But there was another part calling to me, one that was small and quiet and humming just beneath the surface of my skin. One that told me to stop thinking for a
moment and just feel my way to the answer.
I closed my eyes and nodded. “Yeah, Mom. That sounds great. I mean, I can’t promise that I’ll stay, and I don’t even know if my massage license works in Florida, but I’d love to visit you while I figure things out.”
She gasped and I heard her fighting tears as we made plans. When we hung up, I took a long pull of my water, steeled myself, and called Dad.
Chapter Ten
Mr. X
Tuesday became Wednesday and I didn’t hear from my mystery woman again. Wednesday became Thursday and I battled myself over whether or not to send her another email. Obsessing over a woman I’d never met with such all-consuming passion fell way outside the range of normal. I knew that. But I worried about whatever it was that had gone wrong in her life and desperately wanted to do something to fix it.
I did everything I could to stop thinking about her, but nothing worked. Her words twined through my head, whispering to me while I worked. A woman whose name I didn’t even know was quickly becoming the most important part of my days. It wasn’t healthy, but I had the strangest sense that she was worth it. That I was meant to find her journal because…
The thought always stopped right there. I didn’t know why I thought I was supposed to find her journal, only that I did. There was nothing logical or sensible about the feeling, but I couldn’t ignore it.
I wanted to know what happened and I wanted to help, but more than anything, I wanted to prove to her that I wasn’t crazy. And because continually emailing a woman after stealing her most private moments sounded pretty crazy to me, I promised myself I would stay silent unless she reached out again.
That didn’t stop me from checking my email obsessively. When nothing new came in, I settled for reading and rereading the one email she sent me, the one that woke me just after my head hit the pillow Monday night.