Preston's Honor

by Mia Sheridan

  I’d attempted skating around the topic of Preston, but in the end, even though it still hurt that he’d never said goodbye, I’d been too desperate to hear any news of him, so I’d asked Cole how he was. Cole had told me he was enjoying college and finally letting loose a little bit, that the girls couldn’t get enough of him. A stab of jealousy had sliced into a tender spot inside me, and I’d barely stopped myself from wincing with the pain. I’d cried later, and then felt angry at myself for my tears. Preston was doing exactly as he should be doing—he was living his life. As far as I knew, he stayed on the East Coast during the summers, working, and taking classes even during breaks.

  I’d become accustomed to not seeing the Sawyer boys for long stretches of time—even when they’d been living in the same town—so I continued as I had for most of my life: I loved them from afar.

  And I was busy enough that my own life distracted me. I graduated high school, started working full time as a waitress at IHOP, and began making enough money that I moved Mama to an apartment in town. A studio was all I could afford and so my mama and I still slept in the same room, but it was bigger, with new carpeting on the floor, a small but clean kitchen, and a bathroom with an actual door. I wondered if other people smiled every time they clicked a lock behind themselves and figured they didn’t. It was a pitiful sort of joy, I supposed, but it was a joy nonetheless, and I would take what I could get in that arena. I always had.

  My mama quit working at the motel and although I couldn’t do anything about her back—we didn’t have health insurance or enough money to go to a doctor, much less consider surgery—I felt pride in the fact that she no longer endured the physical labor that had caused her injury in the first place.

  Though money was still very, very tight, I’d saved up over four years and finally had eight hundred dollars to buy my very first car: a silver Hyundai with almost two hundred thousand miles on its engine and rust on its fender. I had the interior detailed, hung a vanilla air freshener on the rearview mirror, and smiled every time I turned the key in the ignition. It was mine and I had earned it with hour after hour of hard, honest work.

  The interior of Brady’s was dim and smelled like old beer and something lemony—maybe some type of polish used on the ornate wooden bar in the center of the room. I squinted until my eyes adjusted and I was able to spot my coworkers already at a table near the window. I smiled as I approached, and they called out a greeting, pulling a chair out for me so I could sink down into it.

  My coworkers were young like me and went out for drinks after almost every evening shift. IHOP was open twenty-four hours and when I’d first become a waitress, I’d worked graveyard shift, which had been hard when I had to get up early for classes. But the money was good and it’d improved our situation so I made do, sleeping when I could and studying during my breaks. Recently, I’d gained enough seniority to work days, but I usually picked up a few evening shifts, too, if someone needed a fill-in.

  Because there was a uniform, my clothing wasn’t noticed or compared as it had been at school, and the fact that I felt on more of an even playing field in that regard, had helped me come out of my shell a little and make some friends—friends who I thought liked me for me, and didn’t alienate me, judging my low social status.

  Even so, I rarely joined those going out, so they teased me after I’d ordered a Coke, asking who I was and what I’d done with the hermit known as Annalia. I joked back, turning the conversation. Even though none of my coworkers came from rich families, they wouldn’t understand my situation, wouldn’t understand the pressure of doing well at my job, of making every penny in tip money I could. They rolled into work hung over most days, ignored customers to sit at the break table in the back if they were tired, and didn’t have a dependent parent at home with no safety net whatsoever.

  Sometimes I felt like I was the most ancient person on earth in the body of a nineteen-year-old.

  My Coke was delivered and I took a sip.

  “You can order a beer here, you know. Brady doesn’t care,” Sonya, another waitress, said, tipping her own beer to her lips.

  I shrugged and made a face. “I don’t like beer.” The truth was, I was the daughter of an illegal immigrant. I would never purposefully break the law and risk bringing legal attention to myself and perhaps my mother. Again, this was something I could never attempt to explain to other people who didn’t live the life I led. Nor would I ever try. I carried it alone. When at school, it had been an unconscious decision, as I had never fit in. I was friends with the misfits. At work, we were all much the same, and it felt good to have friends but it didn’t mean I would consider opening up to anyone. Even if I wanted to, I didn’t think I’d know how. I’d been so isolated—reclusive—for so long, it was just a part of me now, like my black hair or green eyes.

  Those damn parameters in which I would always be contained.

  We all chatted and joked for a few minutes before the name Sawyer caught my attention being spoken from somewhere over my shoulder. I startled very slightly, my ears tuning into the conversation between two young Mexican men sitting at the bar, speaking in Spanish. From what I could pick up over the buzz of noise around me, one of them worked at Sawyer Farm and was worried they were going to get laid off after Warren Sawyer had passed away several days before. My breath caught. Warren Sawyer—Preston and Cole’s father—had passed away? I hadn’t heard. Not that I would have, except Linmoor was a small town. Sadness lodged in my throat. Poor Preston and Cole. I didn’t know a whole lot about their family dynamic, but I knew they both respected their father immensely, and he’d always been a fair employer to my mama.

  I stayed for another half hour or so and then told the group I was leaving and said my goodbyes. Outside, I grabbed a newspaper from the box near the curb and threw it on my seat before driving home. Once I’d pulled into my space at the apartment complex where we lived, I opened the paper to the obituaries and scanned the headings. My heart sunk.

  Warren Sawyer, 66, passed away Wednesday, June 2. Born and raised in Linmoor, California, Warren is survived by wife, Camille, and sons, Preston and Cole. Funeral services will be held Monday, June 7 beginning at 11 a.m. at Ritchie & Peach Funeral Home. Friends and family are invited for refreshments at the Sawyer family farm after the service.

  I’d been holding my breath as I read, and I let it out in a rushed exhale. I wondered how he’d died. What would this mean for the farm and the Sawyer boys? Should I go to the funeral? I sat biting my lip, wondering. Wouldn’t it be proper to pay respects, both as a friend of Preston and Cole and as someone whose family member had once worked there? I wondered if my mama would want to go and immediately rejected the question. I knew better. She wouldn’t.

  Gathering my things, I got out of the car and walked up the stairs to our apartment, letting myself quietly inside. My mama was sleeping soundly on the used mattress I’d bought her when we’d moved in here, after I’d inspected it thoroughly for bedbugs. I still shivered in disgust and humiliation at that awful, long-ago memory—but not nearly long ago enough. The bone-deep chill I’d felt, humiliating Preston and Cole . . .

  My socks were quiet on the padded carpet as I tiptoed to the bathroom and locked the door behind me, smiling slightly at the click that continued to be a small pleasure. As I washed the day from my skin, I decided that, yes, I would go to Warren Sawyer’s funeral. It was the right thing to do. I told myself it had absolutely nothing to do with seeing Preston, but I knew that was a lie.

  **********

  The church was packed to the rafters, but I managed to find a seat in the back, pressed between two families. I had to sit mostly leaned on one hip in order to fit, and the people on either side seemed annoyed that I’d squeezed myself in. But it was either that or stand in the back and I was too nervous to situate myself somewhere where I’d likely be one of the first faces the family saw as they entered the church.

  The voices hushed as Camille Sawyer appeared in the doorway, her eyes red
and her lips quivering. She must be in her fifties but she was still a stunning woman who, from a distance, looked more like thirty-five. Her pale blonde hair was in a classic twist and her figure was trim and svelte in a sleeveless, black dress. She stood in the light of the doorway for a moment as if she was posing for the cameras. The effect was striking with the sunshine streaming in behind her and highlighting her golden beauty, and if I’d had a cell phone, I would have been tempted to raise it and snap a shot. But then two tall figures joined her, taking her arms as they moved out of the backlight and into the dim church.

  My breath caught and my stomach clenched. The last time I’d seen Cole had been a year ago but even since then, he’d changed. He was even broader, or maybe he just seemed that way wearing the stiff, dark suit, but the lines of his face were definitely stronger and less boyish than they’d been. My gaze traveled slowly to Preston and though he was identical to Cole, the change in him was more startling because I hadn’t seen him for so much longer. And my God, they were handsome. Something about their double beauty made them even more gasp-worthy. Throughout the church, I swore I heard a collective feminine sigh.

  My heartbeat sped up and all the feelings I’d thought were in the past came slamming back in the time between one breath and the next. Oh dear Lord. How had I forgotten what it felt like to be in the same room as Preston? Had spending time with Cole on those two occasions over the years, emailing him from my school account now and again, led me to fool myself into believing that my feelings for Preston were the same easy, lukewarm emotions I had for Cole? Without having them together, without the contrast right in front of me, I’d somehow begun to believe my feelings for them were similar. More to the point, I’d wanted to convince myself of that falsehood because it was less painful than the truth that the twin I loved didn’t love me and had found it easy to leave without once looking back.

  I sagged down on the pew as they passed by, both of them staring straight ahead, grief etched into their expressions. Camille Sawyer walked slowly, a singular tear sliding down her creamy cheek as she leaned in to Preston.

  I sat numbly through the service, only able to see the backs of their heads. Their mother’s soft cries echoed through the church, and she turned to Preston again and he put his arm around her, pulling her close. She was between both of her boys and I wondered briefly why she appeared to rely more heavily on Preston to hold her up than on Cole.

  “How sad,” the woman next to me murmured. “He was far too young.”

  “Was it a heart attack, did they say?” her husband whispered.

  “Yes. He died out in the fields. Fell right over. One of those Mexicans carried him inside.” One of those Mexicans.

  In my peripheral vision, I saw the woman who’d uttered the words glance quickly at me and then away as if she’d just realized one of those Mexicans was sitting next to her. I stared ahead, pretending I hadn’t heard her.

  After it was over, I watched as Preston and Cole walked back up the aisle, their crying mother between them. Preston’s jaw was rigid and Cole’s eyes were fixed straight ahead. I had the urge to reach out and touch their arms, to offer some measure of comfort, to let them know I was here, and I hurt for them.

  The crush of people moved slowly toward the open doorway and by the time I stepped outside, the family was gone, back to their house as the paper had announced.

  I’d decided earlier to drop by their home with a dish, if only to give my condolences, but I hesitated now, feeling nervous and unsure. There would be so many people there. They wouldn’t miss me; they had closer friends. They’d always had closer friends. I assumed half their high school class would be there, and they’d be overwhelmed as it was. But I also didn’t want to let my own fear stop me from doing what I felt was right—it was right to offer my sympathies to two people I cared about. And the paper had offered an open invitation.

  I climbed in my car and checked on the pie I’d put in a cooler. The ice inside was almost completely melted, but the pie still felt cool. I’d siphoned twenty dollars from our budget to make the pie and had stayed up late after I’d gotten home from work baking it. Though I’d never made a pie before, I’d asked an older woman at work named Darla for a recipe and she’d given me one for an apple blueberry she said was sure to impress. It smelled amazing, and was pretty enough to present to the Sawyers.

  The dirt road in front of the Sawyer family farmhouse was already lined with cars when I arrived and I pulled behind a red Jeep across from the barn and took a deep breath, glancing in the mirror to make sure I didn’t look too wilted. I didn’t have air conditioning in my car and I felt the sticky slide of sweat dripping down the inside of my black blouse and collecting between my breasts, but I hoped the color would hide any wet marks.

  Grabbing a tissue from my glove box, I blotted at the sweat droplets on my forehead and upper lip, freshened my lip gloss, and got out.

  I walked slowly and carefully toward their house, unaccustomed to the short heels I’d borrowed from the sixteen-year-old next-door neighbor, holding the pie in both hands.

  There were a few people mingling on the large front porch, sipping cold drinks and talking in somber tones. Through the open window to the left of the front door, I saw people inside what looked to be the kitchen.

  My heart rate increased, that familiar feeling of not belonging causing my skin to prickle. The sweat still sliding down my back felt cold and clammy. I took a deep breath and gave a man standing near the porch railing a smile that felt timid. He nodded back to me and I walked slowly to the door, raising my hand and knocking.

  My muscles tensed as I waited and when the door opened ten seconds later, I made an effort to relax so I didn’t look as stiff and uncomfortable as I felt. Camille Sawyer was standing on the other side, blotting her nose with a tissue. She stared at me, waiting.

  “Ma’am,” I said. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

  Her brows drew in slightly, and she brought the tissue away from her face. Her eyes were puffy from crying, and her nose was slightly red, but her lipstick was still perfectly applied, her hair beautifully sleek, her eyes vivid aqua in contrast to her pink-rimmed lids, and she looked somehow especially lovely in her sadness. I saw Preston and Cole in her blue, almond-shaped eyes and high cheekbones.

  My hands shook as I held the pie out to her, and she took it but then glanced down in confusion as if she hadn’t meant to do so. “Aren’t you that little thing the boys used to run around with outside?”

  The heat in my face increased. I felt like I was standing in front of her as a ball of flame, a melting candle, and for a minute I could only nod. “I . . . yes, my mother used to work for Mr. Sawyer.”

  She sniffed and turned her face away for a moment, looking back into the house before turning back to me. “Well, I’ll tell the boys you stopped by. Surely you understand why I don’t invite you in.” The look on her face held such disdain that I felt it like a sudden, sharp blow.

  My heart dropped, and I felt sick. I’d known she didn’t like Preston and Cole playing with me when we were children. Even in my childish understanding of the world, I’d received the message that she didn’t believe it appropriate that her boys socialize with the farmworkers or their children. But I hadn’t thought she’d outright snub me if I came to her front door as a woman, to pay my respects to her dead husband.

  I’d been wrong. Incredibly wrong.

  I remembered Warren Sawyer as a man who spent as much time working the land as the men and women he employed. I remembered him patting me on the head and handing me a ripe strawberry, and I remembered falling half in love with him for the way he smiled at me. I remembered him as very large and not very talkative, but with an air of kindness about him. Very much the strong, silent type but not without the light of depth in his eyes. Like Preston.

  I wondered now if he’d disapproved of my friendship with his sons, too, and something about the question—the mere possibility—hurt me, though it felt like an irrational
pain. I hadn’t even really known him and now he was gone.

  For a moment all I could do was focus on my borrowed shoes, wishing I could just disappear. But I gathered what pride I had left—precious little—and raised my chin, offering a small smile that felt wobbly, but I hoped wasn’t visually so. “Please accept my condolences. Goodbye.” I turned slowly and walked with as much grace as I could over the porch and down the front steps.

  The man I’d said hi to standing at the railing shot me an embarrassed look, and it made me want to shrink to know he’d heard the exchange, but I lifted my chin higher and continued my slow walk away from the Sawyer home.

  When I’d only made it a few steps away from the house, Mrs. Sawyer’s voice came to me through the open kitchen window, obviously speaking to someone else in the room. “Ick. Throw this in the garbage. It’s probably not fit to eat.”

  A lump rose in my throat and I sped up my pace, unwilling to cry while on this property. I walked back to my car and climbed inside, shutting the door and pulling hot air into my lungs. I’d left the windows down so my car wasn’t an oven when I returned to it, but even so, the heat was stifling and I felt mildly woozy. I leaned my head back on the seat and fought to regain my strength, waited as the pain of what had happened at the Sawyers’ door lessened.

  You’re okay. You’re okay. You’re okay.

  When I felt less shaken, I reached for my keys, movement in my peripheral vision causing me to glance out the window. Preston was walking very slowly toward my car. My heart jolted, the hand holding my keys freezing on the way to the ignition. He approached me slowly and as he did, I unconsciously opened the door of my car and stepped out, drawn to him without thought.

  Our eyes held as I closed the door behind me, pressing my butt against it and waiting as he drew nearer.

  “Lia.” He sounded shocked, his eyes moving over me quickly, coming to rest on my face. He roamed my features, too, blinking as he took another step closer. “My God, I thought it was you.”