It makes me feel both hopeful and like crying, realizing this is what I’ve missed out on all my life. As soon as I think it, though, I feel guilty. It’s not like I never had a family.
I did.
It wasn’t anyone I was related to, but they were still family. Even if, near the end, I sometimes doubted the way they saw me.
We drive by the spot downtown where Rosas used to be, and I’m suddenly desperate for red velvet cupcakes and mini cinnamon rolls and choc-chip cookie dough. I’m desperate for Mel’s voice and her laugh and the way she hugged people with absolute abandon, as if for one glorious minute we were merging into one being.
“I haven’t told your father,” Mom says, “but I’m thinking about us switching the dining room chairs too. Maybe we can look at those as well?”
The first time I heard my father joke that Mom’s was the most expensive recovery plan he’d ever seen—that was the first time I let myself even consider it. The thought that she might be healed. Or not even healed, but better. The fact thatrecoverywas a word that could apply to her.
“Sure,” I say. As strange and as fragile as it feels, dealing with this new version of my mother, it also feels nice to have her care about my opinion. For her towantto spend time with me. In a messed-up way, it feels a little like having Mel back. It was from Mel that I learned what it was supposed to feel like to have a mother. The Cohens taught me what it felt like to have a home.
We spend the next hour perusing Sofa!Sofa!, debating the merits of leather versus cloth and stripes versus solid and wood versus glass. After that, we drive to the grocery store to pick up some stuff for dinner.
We’re headed for self-checkout when Mom realizes she forgot the waffles. I volunteer to get them and leave her in line, nervously standing behind some biker dude who is covered in tattoos on every visible patch of skin. My phone vibrates in my pocket as I walk back to the frozen food aisle.
It’s a text from Willow.
Pool party at Bailey Marvin’s tonite! You in?
The impulse to think of an excuse is instant, and I’m already typing my response—oh, I wish I could but helping my mom out all day!—when I find the aisle I need.
Let me know if you need a ride home though,I quickly add before hitting Send.
I’m a walking hazard, thumbing away at my phone as I go, but it’s not until I see him that I stop. In a microsecond, I take in every inch of him. His curly black hair, his broad shoulders, his jeans frayed at the hem like he’s been living in them. He looks older, tired.
Everything freezes when our eyes meet. The deep brown eyes that belong to the three people I loved the most in this world. They look different from here, full of grief and anger and something else I can’t name. He’s at the far end of the aisle, no longer walking this way. I open my mouth to say something, but nothing comes out.
I try again and fail again.
Finally, without permission from my brain, my legs start to move. Carrying me back out of the aisle, empty-handed.
When I reach Mom at the self-checkout, she looks confused.
“Where are the waffles?”
“I ...”
“Jessi, what’s wrong?” she asks, following my gaze in the direction I just came from.
“They’re out,” I manage to croak after another second.
“Well, that’s okay,” Mom says uncertainly, like she’s not sure why she needs to reassure me about the fact that there are no frozen waffles in Wally’s. “We can check Safeway on the way home.”
I glance over my shoulder one more time, like there’s something on my heel.
I’m not expecting him to follow me, and he doesn’t.
Of course he doesn’t.
I help Mom carry the bags out to the car, and the whole time she’s chatting about the avocados we found on sale. I’m trying to pay attention to her words, but the biggest part of myself is still standing there in the frozen food aisle with a boy who was family, but never my brother and not really my friend.
I know he comes back to Winchester all the time, but this is the first time I’ve seen him here since the funeral.
I think stupid things:I’m dressed like a hobo.
Mundane things:He’s growing a beard.
