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She could wake up in the morning knowing everyone was caught up, and only have to deal with where that left her in her own head.
“You got it, doc.” His gray eyes held her. “I won’t be far. After I talk to your Mom and eat, I’ll go see Rory. I promise to leave you some of her zucchini bread. Maybe.”
“If she’s put those little chocolate chips in it, you better.”
At the spirited response, weak though it was, he kissed her. A surprise, with Elaine there. It was a closed-mouth press of lips, but lingering enough to be a clear mark of ownership. He stepped back with obvious reluctance. “Ma’am.”
Les felt her mother’s silent evaluation of all of it. Not just Brick, but her lost weight, tired look, her paleness. The guilt knife twisted. She’d never wanted to be a burden to her mother again, and here she was, doing it anyway.
Elaine pulled a nightgown out of the closet, rather than waiting for Brick to bring up her case. It was one of those bulky cotton nightgowns that went to the ankles. One Les wouldn’t take to college, but here, she welcomed it like a favorite blanket.
Les went into the bathroom to put it on. She brushed her teeth using the basket of toiletries Elaine kept for guests, and so Les didn’t have to pack as many for her brief trips home. When she returned, the suitcase was in a corner and Elaine had turned down the bed. She helped Les in.
“I’ll be better in the morning,” Les told her. “I’m just tired.”
“Don’t you worry about anything tonight. Just sleep, baby girl. I’m here.”
She guided Les’s head to her thigh. As she stroked Les’s hair, Les curled her arms around her mother’s hips. A little sigh left her. “So tired.”
“I know. Sleep. It’s all right.”
It only took a couple minutes before Les was pulled under, but her subconscious sensed her mother’s presence, her touch, for a good bit longer. When fitful anxieties eventually roused her, she was alone, but she had the reassurance of Brick and Elaine’s voices, drifting up the stairs.
In the morning she’d stand up and be as strong as she’d taught her family to expect her to be. Even if she still had no answer to the most important question. Would she return to medical school?
The next time she surfaced, the house was quiet and dark. She looked at her phone and found a good night text from Brick, a couple hours old.
Kiss me in your dreams, and my heart will feel it.
She wondered what poem or letter it came from, and looked forward to asking him. She held the thought to her and disappeared back into dreams, seeking that kiss.
When sunrise came, so did the welcoming scent of a homemade breakfast. The house creaked and thumped from people moving around in the kitchen, their familiar voices coming up the stairs. Her phone’s text alert had woken her.
Gone to firehouse to visit boys and talk shop. Your mom had me take them a casserole. I’ll be back for breakfast. You’re on my mind. No worries today, doc. Plenty of time for that later. Be good.
He'd made sure she knew where he was. It brought comfort, she couldn’t deny it. As she sat up and rubbed her face, she absorbed the normal, good things home offered.
Daralyn’s feminine murmur ribboned around Rory’s deep voice. Les had seen their very first kiss, under mistletoe. Despite all the potential packed into that gesture, it had been months later before they acted on their obvious attraction.
“It’s so much easier when it’s a play,” Julie had told Les when they’d commiserated over it. “The director can say, ‘Okay, this is the scene where you two get it on, and stop frustrating the fuck out of the rest of us.’”
An extra burst of joy touched her as she heard Thomas’s voice, masculine and flowing like river water.
While samples of his erotic work didn’t hang on his mother’s walls, he had done a trio of portraits for her. Les, reading in her favorite tree. Rory, playing football in the backyard. Thomas, painting in a field at sunset.
Elaine kept them on proud display above the living room sofa. A pencil study of their father, where Thomas had scattered poses and expressions across a wide page, was framed and hanging in her bedroom. He’d told her he’d turn any of them into a painting, but Elaine liked the study.
“It’s like him,” she’d said. “A man rough and unfinished on the outside, but his soul shining through.”
Thomas had done one for himself, though. Les had asked him if she could get a print of it when she had her own place. Thomas had told her no. “I’ll paint you an original of it, sis.”
Dropped to a knee next to a piece of farm equipment, her father was looking up as if someone had said something to him that gave his lips the slight tug toward a smile. Laughter simmered in his serious eyes. Thomas had that smile and look as well.
He kept the picture at his and Marcus’s place here. Such was her brother’s talent, when Les looked at it, she felt like she could touch the sweat-dampened temple under Dad’s bill cap, curl her fingers into the collar of his shirt, next to the tanned throat. Brush away the wisp of hay on his shoulder.
He didn’t have all the answers, but he’d cared for his family. It was all there. When Elaine asked if he’d painted it from a photo, Thomas had tapped his head. “No. From here.”
Elaine rested a hand on Thomas’s chest, over his heart. “Or from here.”
