by Tawna Fenske
“I didn’t want to inconvenience everyone,” she said, feeling embarrassed. “I didn’t want to make things more awkward than they already were.”
“We’re family,” her mom repeated more forcefully. “Awkward comes with the territory.”
Kayla laughed and grabbed a tissue to wipe her nose. “I should get off. Willa and Aislin are here.”
“Give them a hug from me. And honey?”
“Yeah?”
“Give yourself a hug, too.”
“Thanks, Mom. I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
As she hung up the phone, Kayla felt that hug from two thousand miles away.
…
Tony sat in the driver’s seat of his shitty rental car and stared at his mom’s house.
More than a decade had passed since the last time he sat here like this, but it felt like yesterday. He remembered his mom peeking through the blinds, her forehead creasing before she glanced over her shoulder. Then she shut the blinds and turned away.
He’d held his breath, waiting for her to come out. Waiting for her to join him. He imagined her running down the steps with her bag packed, ready to leave at last.
It never happened.
And he was old enough to know it wouldn’t be happening today. But that’s not what this was about.
He pushed open the car door, breathing in the scent of damp earth and pine. It had rained the night before, drenching the northern Washington landscape with much-needed moisture. It wouldn’t be long before snow started falling in the mountains, and the volume of that would determine how much time he’d spend fighting wildfire the next summer in this part of the country. It was an endless cycle, one mostly outside his control.
But this wasn’t.
He found himself on the doorstep and took a few breaths to steady himself. Then he rang the bell.
Heavy footsteps echoed on the hardwood, and Tony fought the sinking in his chest. He’d known Bud would be here. He was braced for this.
You’re a good man, Tony. Kayla’s words echoed in his ears, giving him strength. You’re kind and smart and gentle and funny and one of the most caring people I’ve ever met. That’s what I see when I look at you.
The echo of those words faded as the door flew open and Bud glared at him. “What the hell do you want?”
Tony shoved his hands in his pockets, resisting every urge that told him to punch the guy. “Nice to see you, too, Bud.” He cleared his throat. “I’m here to visit my mother.”
“She doesn’t want to s—”
“Bud?” A voice from the back of the house caught them both by surprise. “Is that Tony?”
Bud narrowed his eyes and stared at him. Then he turned to call over his shoulder. “You need your rest,” he shouted. “He can come back another time.”
“I’m here now.” Tony slipped his hands out of his pockets, braced for confrontation if it came to that. “And it sounds like my mom’s awake.”
He didn’t wait for Bud’s response. Just shoved past him, shouldering his way through the foyer and toward the hall. Behind him, Bud’s footsteps thundered.
“You’re not welcome here,” he shouted. “I’ll call the police. I’ll—”
“Go ahead.” Tony whirled to face him. He hadn’t realized it before, but he towered over Bud by a good four inches. He probably had in high school, but he’d never noticed until now. “I’m here to see my mother.” He clenched his hands at his sides, fighting to keep his voice even. Nothing good would come from losing his temper. “Call the police if you have to.”
Bud glared back, but Tony caught a flicker of fear in his eyes. “You’re not wanted here.”
“As soon as I confirm that with my mother, I’ll be on my way.” It was weird how calm his voice sounded. “This is still her house, too.”
He waited for some hot-air response. For Bud to insist he paid the mortgage, that it was his house alone.
But something he saw in Tony’s face must have registered. He took a step back, frowning. “I’m watching you,” he said. “Don’t try anything.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.” How strange his own voice sounded. On the inside, Tony’s heart rattled like a rusty engine. It wasn’t fear—not exactly—but he felt like an anxious kid. Like a huge snowball of fury and rejection was barreling down the hall toward him.
Don’t show fear.
He flexed his fingers, surprised to find his hands weren’t shaking. “I’m checking on my mother now.”
He pivoted and walked down the hallway. The bedroom his mom shared with Bud was at the end, and Tony marched toward it with steps more certain than he felt.
Rounding the corner, he stumbled to a halt in the doorway. “Mom?”
She was sitting up in bed, propped between two pillows big enough to dwarf her small frame. Her face was the same hue as the stark white duvet, and her hair hung straw-like around her shoulders.
Tony surged forward, panic moving up his throat. “Holy shit, Mom. You look awful.”
“Don’t curse,” she said, holding a hand up. “And stay away. I don’t want you to get sick.”
“You heard her.” Bud’s voice boomed behind him, but Tony ignored it. “She doesn’t want you here.”
Tony whirled around, planting his feet firmly. “I’m done being polite, Bud. Get the fuck out of the room right now.”
Bud faltered, taking a step back. “You can’t talk to me like that in my own home.”
“I just did.” Tony moved around the bed, placing himself between his mom and her husband. “You said you were going to call the police. Better get on that.”
Bud glared at him, then spun around and stalked off.
Tony breathed out as he turned back to his mother. Dropping into the chair beside the bed, he caught her hand in his. “Christ, you’re burning up.”
“I’m fine, dear. I just need rest.”
“No. Uh-uh.” Tony glanced around for pill bottles. “Where’s the medication you’re supposed to be taking?”
“It’s too expensive. You wouldn’t believe how much they’re charging for a little bottle of pills.”
Tony gritted his teeth. This was bad. This was really bad.
His inner caveman shouted at him to bundle her into his arms and carry her out to the car. She couldn’t weigh more than a hundred pounds. The gear he carried in the field weighed more than that.
But the steely look in his mom’s eye told him it wouldn’t be so simple. He focused on that—on the pale blue color of her irises. They were the same eyes he remembered peering down over the edge of his crib.
The same eyes he’d seen filling with tears as she stared out the front window when his father left. She’d had one hand on Tony’s shoulder as she cradled Joel in her arms.
Tony blinked, struggling to keep it together. “I know you’re still in there somewhere, Mom.” He swallowed hard, conscious of Bud’s voice rumbling in the living room. Calling the police? Must be.
Tony pressed on, determined to finally get this out. “I know the mother I grew up with—the one who loved her sons unconditionally—didn’t just disappear when Dad did.”
Tears sprung up in his mother’s eye. “Tony—”
“No, Mom. I need to say this.” He took a shaky breath. “For years, I’ve thought of love as this thing that makes you lose yourself. That causes people to do dumb things and hurt people. But now I’m not sure I believe that.”
A tear slipped down his mother’s cheek as she squeezed his hand. He could feel her preparing to say everything was fine. That he was being silly.
“I still love you,” he said. “That’s the thing I’m starting to figure out. You can love people who bring out the best in you and people who bring out the worst in you. What I never figured out before is that it’s actually pretty damn easy to tell the differ
ence.”
His brain flashed with images of Kayla. Her hair falling over her face as she read in bed. Her voice as she cooed over the dog. The sweet smell of her skin as she fell asleep in his arms.
Leo was right. There were no guarantees in relationships. Just ways to patch the roof and caulk the walls and keep the rain from coming in. His mother’s house had been leaking for years, and she’d been fighting like hell to shove buckets under the drips.
He should have brought an umbrella. Or a goddamn barrel. Or—
Tony swallowed, aware he was losing his grip on the metaphor. Also, that Bud’s voice had stopped murmuring in the other room. The police must be on their way.
He squeezed his mother’s hand. “Let me help you, Mom.”
Another tear slipped down his mother’s face, and she dashed it away with the back of her hand. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I know I’ve failed you as a mother.”
“You haven’t failed.” He said the words automatically, not fully believing them. “Even if you had, there’s still time to fix it.”
She reached for a tissue on the nightstand. “So much has happened. So much that can’t be undone.”
It was the closest she’d ever come to admitting her house of cards was close to toppling. The closest she’d come to acknowledging she might be willing to look for a way out.
He looked deep in her eyes. “There’s no such thing as too late,” he said. “And I’m not asking you to undo anything. I’m asking you to move forward in a different direction.”
Hadn’t Kayla taught him that? Or the damn book—but no, he was pretty sure Kayla deserved credit. She’d believed in him even when he didn’t believe in himself.
God, he’d been an idiot.
He ordered himself to focus, to stay here with his mother in this moment. “You’re my mom,” he said softly. “You’ll always be my mom. And I love you.”
“Oh, honey.” Tears filled her eyes, and she squeezed his hand tightly. “I love you so much.”
A coughing fit seized her, making her shoulders heave as she fought to cover her mouth with a tissue.
“Look, we can talk about this later,” he said. “Right now, we need to get you to the hospital. And before you argue, I’ve already set this up with the billing department. I’ll cover the cost, whatever it is.”
She stopped coughing and looked at him, shaking her head. “I’m scared.”
“So am I.” They weren’t talking about the same thing, but right now, he was a little boy who needed his mother. “I’m scared to death I’m going to screw things up, but you know what scares me more?”
“What?”
“Losing the people I love because I’m too afraid to step up.”
Saying those words out loud socked him right in the gut. Or maybe that was the hollowness inside him—the deep, heavy misery he’d felt from the moment Kayla walked out the door.
He took a deep breath. “Not all love feels like this. What you’ve been living with? That’s not the good kind of love.”
He’d never realized that before—how many kinds of love there were. Some kinds were toxic, and maybe that wasn’t love at all.
But what he’d felt with Kayla—so pure and good and perfect—that was the kind worth fighting for.
His mother closed her eyes and squeezed his hand. “You’re so brave.”
“I’m not.” He managed a weak smile. “I just fake it really well.”
She shook her head sadly. “No, you’re the real deal. I wish I’d learned how to do that. How to be brave before it was too late.”
“It’s not too late, Mom.” Not for her. Maybe not for him, either.
A siren sounded in the distance. He knew better than to hope Bud might have called an ambulance, so he stood and looked down at his mom. “I’m going to carry you out to my car, okay?”
His mother hesitated, then nodded. “Okay.”
As he stooped down and slid his arms under her, she wrapped her arms around his neck and held on tight. “Where’s the girl?” she murmured. “The one here with you before.”
He hadn’t realized she’d even been aware of Kayla, and his heart twisted at the mention of her. “Gone.”
His mother drew back, looking him in the eye as he carried her across the room. “I hope she’s coming back.”
Tony swallowed hard, blinking back the surge of emotion. He thought about his father, his mother, his brother, his whole fucked-up childhood. As his gaze landed on the cross-stitched wall hanging, he felt the strangest surge of nausea mixed with hope.
“She’s not coming back,” he said, turning his back on the living room, on the wall hanging, on his asshole stepfather, wherever the hell he might be. “But I’m going after her.”
…
An hour later, Tony dialed his brother’s number. It was after midnight in Australia, which he knew was a ridiculous time to call. And if Joel was out on a fire—
“Hey there.” Joel’s voice was tinged with sleep, but he sounded alert. “Everything okay?”
Tony took a seat in the same chair Kayla had warmed only days ago. “Mom’s in the hospital.”
“Shit. Is it serious?”
“Yeah.” Slowly, he filled his brother in on the events of the last few days. He told him about Leo’s call and finding their mom on the floor. He told him about her leaving the hospital and returning to Bud.
And he told him about Kayla. All of it—even the messy stuff.
“Wow, bro. I’m glad you were there.”
“Me, too.” He rested his elbows on the table. “I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
“With Mom or with Kayla?”
“All of it.”
His brother said nothing for a long while, and Tony began to wonder if they’d been disconnected.
“Did I ever tell you about the time Marc dumped me?”
“What?” Tony frowned. “When was this?”
“A few months after we started dating. Long time ago. I was doing the same stupid shit I always did where I wouldn’t let anyone in. Didn’t want to talk about Mom or Dad or Bud or any of that because it was too damn hard.”
Tony held his breath, conscious of how familiar this sounded. “What happened?”
“He told me to go fuck myself.” Joel laughed, able to see the humor in the situation. “Told me that until I learned to open up, I was never going to have any kind of meaningful relationship.”
The familiarity hit him like a punch in the throat. “What did you do?”
“I got mad at first. I never liked talking about that shit, you know?”
“Yeah.” Tony swallowed. “I know.”
“But eventually, I figured out that if I didn’t pull my head out of my ass, I was going to lose the person who meant the most to me. So, I planned a grand gesture.”
“A what?”
“A grand gesture. Like in the movies, when the guy wins the girl back by holding a boom box over his head or beating up her bully or whatever.”
Tony thought about Kayla’s love of rom-coms. About what on earth could help him win her back. “What was your grand gesture?”
Joel laughed. “I went to therapy first. That was the big thing. And then I went to Marc’s house. I stood out on the lawn, and I sang Kris Allen’s ‘Letting You In’ at the top of my lungs until he opened the door.”
“I don’t know that song.”
“Totally cheesy, but it worked.” Joel laughed again. “We watched American Idol together that season he won, so it kinda made sense. Also, it got Marc back.”
Tony breathed in and out, weighing his options. “A grand gesture. I can do that.”
“I know you can. I have faith in you, bro.”
“Thanks. Stay safe out there, man.”
“Same to you.”
They hung up, and Ton
y set his phone down. The hospital was quiet, with nurses moving briskly down the hall. In his mother’s room, monitors beeped and whooshed.
Tony stood up and walked into the room. His mom was fast asleep, hair spread on the pillow. Bud hadn’t come by—not that Tony expected him to. Eventually they’d have to deal with it. His stepfather would try to get her back, and either she’d go or she wouldn’t. If history was any indication, Tony shouldn’t hold his breath hoping for miracles.
But for now, just for the moment, Tony sat down beside the bed and took his mom’s hand. She was fast asleep, knocked out good this time on pain meds.
Still, he needed to get some things off his chest. He needed…he needed…his mother.
He took a deep breath and squeezed her hand. “I know it hasn’t been easy for you, Mom. I know you kinda lost it after Dad left.”
He’d always recognized that grief. He’d felt it on a bone-deep level as a boy missing his father.
But until he’d lost Kayla, Tony hadn’t understood the gut-twisting grief of losing his other half. His better half. The person who made him want to get up every morning and keep striving to be a better person.
He breathed in and out, staring at the monitors beside his mother’s bed until his vision cleared. “I wish I could have done more,” he told her. “I wish—”
What? What did he wish?
He took a shaky breath as the words gelled in his mind. “I wish I hadn’t given up so easily. I wish I’d tried harder. I wish I’d understood that when you love a kind, generous, wonderful person, you don’t give up on them. Not ever. Not even when someone’s lost their freakin’ mind.”
His mom didn’t smile, which was okay. It was a dumb joke anyway, so probably best for her to stay unconscious. Maybe he’d work up the courage to say these things to her when she woke up. Maybe he’d find a way to make a difference this time.
So many damn maybes and not one scrap of certainty.
Well, one. He loved Kayla more than he ever thought possible. And if Joel was right—if he really hadn’t fucked this up beyond repair—he had to find a way to show her that.