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“I'd never kick you out,” she replied, reaching out to lay a hand on my knee. “But your dad and I have been thinking …”
At eighteen, I’d moved out of my parents’ place and bought an apartment in New York City. Back then, I had been eager to get out on my own, to have a place to party and hook up with as many chicks as I wanted without being under their watchful, scrutinizing gaze. But after the accident, I couldn’t handle being on my own, and my parents were so gracious in welcoming me back with wide, open arms. In turn, I had spent my money on buying new cars for us all, paying off their mortgage and my never-ending medical bills, and building a sizable savings account.
It had always struck my friends as unusual, not wanting to move back out after moving back in, and maybe it was. But there never seemed to be much point in getting a new place of my own.
Well, until now, apparently.
Barking with laughter, I dropped the shirt I had been folding to my lap. “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” I exclaimed, genuinely startled by the abrupt segue into forcing me back out of the nest. “Are you actually kicking me out?!”
Mom's eyes brimmed with tears as she joined me in laughing. “Oh God, I'm a horrible mother,” she groaned, clapping her other hand over her eyes.
“No, you're not,” I said, laying my palm over her hand on my knee. “I'm just … why now?”
“Oh, Dilly.” She sighed, wiping her tears away. “Your dad and I … we're tired, you know? We're old, and trying to keep this house running is making us older. Having you here has been great. You help us, and that's more appreciated than you know. But you’re leaving again—and not just for a few days or a couple of weeks. You’re leaving for months, and …” She sighed again, her shoulders drooping. “It's just hard.”
It was funny how you never noticed your parents aging until, suddenly, one day, you saw the deep lines etched into their skin. You saw how weathered they were, how their skin and hair had fallen victim to the cruelties of time, and you wondered foolishly when the hell you had allowed it to happen. If there was anything you could’ve done to stop it if you’d been a little more aware.
“Mom, if you want me to pay someone to—”
She shushed me with the raise of a hand. “We don't want you to pay anyone.”
“Then, what can I do?” I asked, desperate to do something for these people who had permitted me to stay long beyond the societal cutoff. “You want me to get my own place?”
Mom shrugged, the guilt evident in her eyes. “We just want to be able to sell this place and get ourselves a little house of our own. We’d probably stay local, or if you wanted to move out of state, we’d follow wherever you went. But we don't want to think about doing maintenance or yardwork or any of the shit we can't really do anymore, and we don’t want you to have to worry about us. We just …” She hesitated, clamping her lips shut and pressing them tightly together.
When she didn't continue for a few seconds, I asked, “What?”
“I don't know, Dylan …” She groaned, raising her gaze to the ceiling fan spinning away overhead. “We just wonder if you would settle down if you had a place of your own.”
The comment brought another abrupt burst of laughter. “Ma, I had my own place before, and I never settled down,” I said, chuckling uncontrollably.
“No, but you were younger then,” she reasoned. “You were more … wild. You needed to—”
“Sow my oats?” I teased, my chest bubbling with mirth.
Her eyes widened as her skin paled. “What oats have you been sowing?!”
“I’m just kidding,” I said, continuing to laugh. “I always use my own protection, I promise. That was one conversation with Dad I actually listened to.”
Well, not always.
Lennon came to mind—she usually did at some point—and my gaze dropped to the crumpled shirt in my lap.
“Well, anyway,” she muttered with a sigh, “I just think about these past few years, you know? I know you’ve been healing and acclimating, but you’ve also grown up a lot. And I just think …”
I shook my head—at my mother or at the black-haired goddess in my mind, I wasn’t sure. “There wasn’t anybody to settle down with, Ma.”
“Then, who did you write all those songs about?” she asked as if she could see the enigma in my head.
Any residual laughter faded as I replied, “Just a girl I once saw in the front row.”
***
It had been sixty-four days since I'd last heard her voice, twenty-eight since I'd received that last three-worded text.
I miss you.
As I loaded my dad’s station wagon with suitcases and guitars, I hadn't expected the phone in my pocket to ring, and when I saw her face light up the screen, I hesitated long enough to stare into her deep brown eyes and wonder what good could possibly come of this. I was leaving, and she had a boyfriend. What more was there to know that could change any of that?
