I smiled at her, the feeling in my chest light as I thought about her showing up at the shop. The circumstances were not ideal, but the result was this old yet new feeling of significance that was hard to ignore.
And I was happy she came.
It took me a month to realize it, but I was happy to have seen my mom. Happy to be seeing her now. Underneath all the pain and memories and regret for our shared bad decisions, I was happy to have seen her. And guilty because of it.
“And what if she never comes back?” I asked. “What would you do then?”
She took a long, long breath, her entire body slouching deeper into the cushions. It was such a funny sight. My mom never slouched. She was always prim and proper, always the perfect host, perfect homemaker, perfect everything. But right now she was slumped back into my furniture like she was utterly exhausted by the conversation. It was a conversation we’d been having for ten years, in a way. Maybe it was time to finally get some closure.
“I’ve had a lot of time to imagine what I would do if your sister ever came back to us. But I’ve also had a lot of time to reconcile the fact that the possibility is slim,” she said.
I frowned. It was weird to hear her talk like that when she was the one who wanted to keep the company.
“But you want to keep everything the same.”
“Augustus.” She sat forward, her elbows going to her knees and her eyes pinning me with sincerity. “I will never give up hope that your sister still loves us and will come home. I will always hold onto that, but I have other things to grab hold of too. Baby, you were so young when she left. Nearly a boy masquerading in a man’s body. We should have held onto you much tighter than we did, but we let our grief get in the way of noticing yours.”
Shit.
I covered my eyes. The damn things were stinging without my permission again. Suddenly my mom’s hand was covering my forearm, a reassuring squeeze of steady pressure.
“Mar was your first world. You hadn’t found a passion big enough like this art you love so much. Certainly not a girl significant enough to make you question your happiness outside of your family. And the rest was just inconsequential for you,” she said. “She was our world too, Auggie. Is. But you know who else is?”
I shook my head, the heels of my hands digging deep into my eyes trying to stop the moisture that was already spilling.
“You, son.” A deep voice said, a large hand coming around to hold onto my shoulder and squeeze. My mom’s soft voice echoed. “You. And when you lost your world, we didn’t do a good enough job of letting you know that there is more than just pain out there for you, for her, for all of us.”
I hissed and cursed, my breath feeling ragged and the slice of air feeling like knives in my chest. Still, the presence of my hands literally in my eyeballs didn’t stop the tears from gathering and falling under the cover of them.
And wasn’t that the silliest thing of all? Hiding my tears from the people who’d seen me cry first, seen me cry the most. And why? Because I wanted to appear strong? Well, turns out I wasn’t strong all the time. I was actually incredibly fragile when it came to this subject and that’s why even though I could face up to everything else, I’d been running from this very thing for almost half my life.
The universe chose this precise moment to show me an image of her. Of Mar. the last time I saw her she was grown. Smiling and giving me shit like the smartass little sister that she was.
I missed her. I really, really did. But I also missed this. I missed my family. Missed my home. And whatever reasons she had deep down in her heart that ultimately sent her away back then, I just hoped she forgave me for not having the same resolve. For not being able to wait for her.
“Even if Mar never comes back, Auggie. Even if we sell everything we own or keep everything the exact same. Even if we never see her again, not even to say goodbye for good… even then, we can learn to find happiness in what we have together,” Mom said. Each word carefully placed between the broken shattered pieces of my heart. “With what we havenow.”
“And that’s okay?” I asked, crying hard at this point.
Broken and hoping this decision would fix me.
“It has to be,” dad said.
The truth wasn’t a perfect fix. It was a tacky duct tape piecing usback together with gaps and rips and tears in between the places where we’d severed.
The truth—our reality, it hurt. The pain was still there.
But the pain was ours.
Chapter Forty
ALTA
Time was not working for me anymore. Time was officially driving me crazy.
It was one thing when I felt like we were making progress. When the more I reached out to him, the more he seemed to respond—reluctantly at first, but more and more the longer I persevered. More like himself every day.
But he’d stopped responding, going silent out of nowhere. And I could either continue to be patient and pray that this silence meant he was finally, finally coming back to me, or I could go to him and demand when the hell he was planning on being ready.
