So I just nodded my head curtly and tried to ignore the disappointed sigh she let out before she turned and tore away.
And as the phantom feeling of her hands on me buzzed awareness all over my skin, I couldn’t help but think, there was something right between us.
But was it right enough to call it love?
Chapter Thirty-Nine
AUGUSTUS
“I like your friend, I’m glad you have him.” Were my mom’s first words as Clay walked out of my front door later that same day. They were spoken so primly that they made me laugh.
“Yeah?”
“Oh yes. He’s a nice boy,” she said.
The snort couldn’t leave me fast enough. The woman wastotallyuninformed about Clayton Ferguson but I guess that’s how he must have come across to her as he’d been coming by the townhouse and acting as some sort of liaison to my parents about the Fernandez deal. Which I guess was nice for her, while I had to deal with his cutting looks and his constant not so nice reminders forme to‘get my shit together’.
“If he’s nice then what am I?” I asked.
“The nicest boy.” She smiled, something passing through her eyes that seemed private in a way. Sad in others. “My boy.”
My heart squeezed so tight, I think it burst. And all at once, enough was enough. It was finally enough.
Trust yourself, Harper.Alta’s voice in my mind encouraged me to push forward.
“Mom?”
“Yes, baby?”
“What if…” The breath I took in was large and vast and readying. There was so much air under my diaphragm that I felt like it might crack. But if I was going to crack, I might as well get the answer that could break me anyway. “What would we do if Mar came back?”
I don’t know what I expected when I asked her this. Maybe for her to cry or break down or storm out the room. What I didn’t expect was for her to smile, the air from her soft laugh blowing her hair away from her face.
“Well, I’d hug her, of course,” she started. “You know your sister, she gave the best hugs. Learned that from me. Oh Auggie, I don’t think I’d ever let her go.”
I raised my eyebrows, my own laugh coming out soft and wistful. “Yeah, I guess she was a pretty good hugger. But she learned that from me. You’re too tiny to be a good hugger.”
She laughed, but it quickly fizzled out into a sigh. “I’d make her peach cobbler every night for dinner and bread pudding every morning for breakfast.”
“Oh, I get it.” I nodded. “Your plan is to keep her too full to run away again.”
Her eyes sparked with humor, “Legally, chaining her up would be frowned upon, so this is my next best plan.”
Weird. I think that was the first time I’d ever joked about mysister running away, and to my mom no less. Pausing, we both looked at each other. And then simultaneously, we smiled. Smiles turned to grins, and grins turned to bubbling laughter.
And damn, was it freeing.
For so long the topic of Mar’s disappearance had been like a foggy minefield. Maneuvering it was painful, and you were almost always bound to blow something up. But was it wrong that being able to laugh about this shit show was somehow refreshing?
Mom sighed and all at once her rigid, too formal posture slipped and she was sinking backward into the cushion of the couch. “I’ve always pictured us reuniting peacefully. On a beach or in the sprinkling rain. But if I know this family, if it ever happened it’ll be like a thunderclap. Probably loud. There’d probably be some yelling.”
“Fighting too,” I added.
“That too,” she laughed. “But then… the dust would settle and there she would be. Here. Home. It’s the end scene to my every dream, Augustus. The four of us, back together again.”
“You wouldn’t be mad?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I’m so far past anger, I don’t think I have any left in me. I was angry for the longest time. At everyone—You and your sister included. Your father especially. But the anger didn’t get me anywhere. It crippled me and made everything harder. Hope got me a lot further. It got me to you for the first time in years.”
