“Your father and I have loved having you here, with us.Living with us.It’s been a joy for the both of us, to see you growing up into the man you are right now.”She squeezed my fingers.“But at some point, for all our sakes, you need to go do your own thing for a while.See what it’s like, being on your own.Or, perhaps, being with someone else, someone who isn’t us.”
I smiled softly at her.“Are you evicting me?”
Mom chuckled.“You can move back in when we really are weak old fools, how about that?”
“It might not work out.”I knew she’d understand what I was referring to.
“No, perhaps not.If things worth trying were guaranteed to succeed, I’m not sure they’d be worth trying quite so much.”
I closed my eyes for a moment.Trying to imagine what it’d feel like, jumping feet-first into something with Flynn, only for it to all fall apart later.Where I might go after that; what life would turn into, if the ties that bound me to my hometown had been, not severed, but stretched out of recognition.
“There’s only so long you can stand in that little thrift store, Oliver, sifting through the remains of other people’s lives and hoping that’s enough to fill your own.”She smiled, as if to sap the sting.“Once in a while, you need something brand new.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
I’d forgotten to worryabout Flynn, and my dad, and the fact that I’d left them alone together, but my brain helpfully obliged by dumping all the dread and anxiety on me in the time it took to walk down the hallway.Half-expecting to walk into the living room and find my father stone-faced and foreboding, and Flynn a cowed huddle on the sofa.
I strained to listen as I neared the doorway.
“...and that’s why, though I know it sounds counterintuitive, the controlled burn is so important.Because some of these plants, they’re biologically wired to only release their seeds when faced with high heat.Very high heat, really.Oh, hello Oliver.”
My dad looked up at me, with a smile.
I glanced at Flynn, my jaw clenched, expecting - fearing - the expression I might see on his face.Then blinked, confused, at the easy grin he flashed back.
“Your dad was just telling me about the burn he’s going to do, on his wildflower meadow.”
They were English words, assembled into a sentence that had all the hallmarks of being intelligible, but my brain simply wasn’t holding up its end of the bargain.
“The burn?”
Dad gave Flynn an ‘oh, this silly son of mine’ look.“It’s been a few years since the last one, remember?We had to skip it last year, because of the drought.”
It’d been so dry, the whole world had seemed brittle and always on the cusp of flames.We’d mowed the meadow down instead; my dad on the ride-on mower, me standing nearby with buckets of water, alert for a rogue spark.
My head felt like I was rising from deep water.Pressures so strange, I could almost hear my skull creak.
