“So,” he said, standing in the corner of the room like he was a little bit afraid to get too close to her. “Why hadn’t you ever done that before?”
“Zane,” she said. “Are you… trying to get to know me?”
“I feel like I should know about this. I… Cara, I am deeply aware of the fact that I’m older than you, and that I am a lot more… Messed up than anyone, really, not just you, but you specifically. That was a big concern that I had about this and…”
“Oh, so you just want to not feel guilty?”
“No. Fuck that. I don’t care about feeling guilty. What’s one more bad feeling?” His gaze was intense, and his logic was… Well, it wasn’t unreasonable. She understood that, all things considered.
“Okay… Then what are you looking for?”
“I just want to know. I just want to know what the situation is and understand it. That’s all.”
“Well… My dad died when I was thirteen. It was horrible. Because he was the one who was really holding everything together. He was the one who was taking care of my mom as she started to have… quirks. That was what he called it. When she would forget what day it was, or my birthday, or other things that started to really stand out and seem alarming. He covered all of that. He helped keep the house clean, and he was so cheerful, because she couldn’t be sometimes. And then when he was gone, there was just nothing there. Nothing between my mom and me, and the fact that her health was only going to get worse. My brother was already out of the house, it was just the two of us. I fell into taking care of her, because it was something I wanted to do, but also something I had to do.”
He looked away. “I’m sorry about your dad. I didn’t know about that.”
“It’s okay.” She smiled. Because they already knew what that meant. It’s okay, but no, it’s not. It’s okay, because nobody asked, and you have to keep on living no matter how terrible the thing is, but it’s really not okay, because how could it ever be normal or fine to lose something like that?
“So you… You just took care of your mom from the time you were thirteen years old?”
“You were alone at thirteen.”
“It’s not a contest, Cara.”
“I know.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “But…things were more normal until I was halfway through high school. Then it started to get more difficult. By the time I was a senior, I was home taking care of her. That was when things really started to progress, but if it had been that bad when I was a child, I know that my brother and Marlowe would’ve moved in. She wasn’t diagnosed with dementia yet, so we didn’t really know what was happening. I think my dad was scared, and his response to that was to just try to cover up all the signs. So… That left me with my mom, who was getting steadily worse, and a mystery.”
“That’s way too much for a kid to handle.”
“Yeah. But you know as well as anybody that nobody asks if you’re old enough to handle tragedy. It just happens sometimes. Losing my dad was a shock, like what you went through. Everything was normal, and then he was gone. It was a heart attack. But I never saw him. Not after he died. With my mom, it wasn’t a shock. I had years and years of losing her. Slowly, in increments. I’ve experienced both things. I don’t recommend either. I don’t think there’s an easy way to lose a parent.”
He shook his head. “No. I don’t think there is.”
“I was responsible for my mother until she died rightbefore we came here. I couldn’t figure out how to have a sex life and do that. I didn’t like going out and talking to people because everybody looked at me like I was sad, and I was. I am. Everyone in town knew it.”
He nodded slowly. “I do understand that. I could only ever be that kid who lost his whole family. I had to leave Texas so that I could shake that off. I just never told anybody else.”
“I was thinking about this the other day. For me, it’s kind of easy. Because if people ask about my parents I can just say they’re both gone, and the more time passes the more normal of a thing that’s going to be. Eventually, it’ll just be expected. It won’t signpost all this difficult stuff.”
“Yeah, but I can always just say I don’t have siblings. It just feels like a lie. But if you say that you do have a brother, people want to know if you’re close, what he does, where he is.”
She nodded. “Yeah. I get that. I bet erasing him completely doesn’t feel right.”
“Not all the time. But sometimes, I figure he understands because he knows I don’t want to talk about how he died.”
“That’s the hard part,” she said. “I feel the same way. You get into this conversation, and you just end up talking about the grieving part. With my mom, there were a lot of years of that. But she was great when I was younger. She was just different later. It felt like a loss because I missed the person that she used to be, but she was still with me. Just changing all the time. I want to learn to try and appreciate something from those years too. Something of her. Because it was time that I had. I have an easier time pulling up good memories of my dad, because he was there one day and then gone the next. And he was always ever himself. I think I miss who he was in a sharper, more detailed way, because who my mom was feels a little bit… Lost. Like the memories got taken for me too.”
“What was your mom’s favorite TV show?”
She smiled. “She liked Matlock.”
“The old one or the new one?”
“Both. She liked both a lot. She’s the one who taught me to knit when I was little. She loved to go to yarn stores. Loved to look at all the different colors, feel all the different textures. She loved to bake. She used to make the best cinnamon rolls. Then I learned how to do it. And now I have a bakery. All because my mom loved to bake cinnamon rolls. She made me who I am. The easy things and the hard things.”
She took a deep breath. “I feel like I’m just learning how to be a person. Not a caregiver, not a grieving daughter, because I’ve been both of those things for so long, and I don’t really know who I am apart from it. That’s why I wanted to move across the country so badly. When Aiden cheated on Marlowe, I thought… This is it, the whole move is going to crumble. I really was upset about what happened to her, and I really did think it was the best thing for her to come out here, and look, it was. It really was. But I wanted it for me. I thought the only way I was ever going to be able to start over and find a new life was by getting out of Vermont. Changing my surroundings. As much as I possibly could. Then I got here, and I wasn’t magically brave. I wasn’t magically a different person.”
She looked down at the quilt on his bed and began to pick at a thread. “But then I saw you. I… I felt like if I was going to do something reckless, if I was going to do something brave, it was going to be you.”
