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I see Mom on the deck, staring at the ocean, vaping.
Mom vaping.
It's absurd.
She looks so sad and hurt, and I don't know what to say.
For once, I don't do what she did to me. I don't turn away and pretend I don't see. I move through the living room. I join her on the deck.
I stand next to her at the railing, letting the ocean breeze mingle with the strange bubblegum scent.
"It's your sister's." She exhales a cloud of vapor.
"So you're trying to convince her it's not cool?"
She laughs.
The sound hits me somewhere deep. It's been such a long time. Since before the incident. She laughs sometimes, now, but never like this. The full-throated, musical laugh.
The one she shares with me and me alone.
Because I'm her oldest. Because I understand things my sister doesn't. Because we share things our father doesn't.
Because she loves me and trusts me.
And I love her and trust her.
We never say any of that, but it's there, under the easy laughs.
"It's working." She laughs again. "No more vaping."
"Maybe she hides it better."
"No. She still smokes with her girlfriend. I smell the pot everywhere."
Her girlfriend? Julie told her?
Mom shakes her head. "You think I don't know anything because I'm older. But I was your age once. I was in love once."
"You don't love dad?"
"It's different. Softer. Safer."
"You do?" I ask.
"Of course. We're partners. But there isn't the passion I felt when I was your age."
Do she and Dad still seem in love? Sometimes. Other times, they're business partners first. But that is safer. And I…
Well, I never thought of her that way, as a woman who would choose between passion and stability.
As a woman who decided to marry my father.
"You're upset," she says. "School?"
I shake my head.
"Another white boy?"
