Page 70 of Dearly Departed

Gabriel: I’ve paid the nurses for the flight and the three days after we land. They have their own accommodations, also provided by me. Get over it

Jacob: What’s the rush, handsome?

Gabriel: holiday spirit

My stomach turns to knots. A nightmarish aspect of this is that we didn’t actually miss Christmas. The Hills held out hope and waited for us.

I’m grateful. I am.

But Christmas is just too much right now.

Christmas involves mountains of food everywhere and people trying to prove their love by shoving Christmas ham into each other’s mouths. There are too many dinners and brunches. I can’t take it.

Not that I have plans to mention it.

I don’t mention much of anything, because as soon as we board the plane and settle into our seats, fatigue covers me like the blankets at Gabriel’s house. Not even a freak plane crash could keep me awake. I sleep the flight away and wake up when we land at Nice.

It’s not quite dawn in France. Two SUVs take us through rainswept dark to the outskirts of Mougins.

I’m expecting a collection of vehicles when we arrive, but there are only two.

I manage the impressive feat of getting out of the SUV under my own power. Gabriel climbs out of the second one.

“Where’s Jameson?” I would expect him to be the first to barrel out the doors and drag us inside despite the hour. “I thought you said everyone was coming ahead.”

“They did.” I must imagine the nervousness that crosses Gabriel’s face. There’s no reason for him to be nervous.

“Then where are they?”

The door of the villa opens, and soft, golden light spills out. “Jacob?”

It’s not any of the Hills.

It’s my mother.

I’ve done my best not to think of her. I’ve been angry with her, dismissive of her, and disgusted with her. I tried to tell myself I didn’t care where she went after my father went to prison.

But now she looks small, standing in the doorway of my villa—small and nervous and sorry, and I remember all the times I felt like I couldn’t go on, didn’t deserve to, and so I’d go into her bedroom and lie on the bed with her and not say anything until I felt better, and she would lie there with me, quiet and close, never leaving first.

Everything else—my criminally greedy father, the fucked-up things he went along with to make himself richer—disappears.

Those things will come back. They always do. We’ll have to talk about them someday.

I don’t know I’m walking until I’m at the door, and I don’t know how desperately I’ve missed my mother until I drop my head onto her shoulder, and I don’t know I’m going to cry—again—until I do.

“Oh,” she says. “Oh, Jacob. I’m sorry, sweetheart. I should have been here sooner.”

“Don’t worry. I’m—I’m fine.” I got my hair and my eyes from my mother, and I also inherited her reflexive denial. I should’ve realized long ago that all might not have been well with her.

“No, you’re not,” she whispers. “But you will be. Come inside.”

19

CATHERINE

Jacob’s mother, Margaret, isn’t the only one to show up for our weird pre-dawn holiday reunion.

My mother is here, too.