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“Oh, Joseph. You’re finally here!” My mother appeared from the sitting area, her hair and makeup perfectly done. “And this must be Sutton.”
Sutton dropped my hand as she smiled, and it lit up the whole damn room. “I’m sorry we’re late. It’s my fault. I had extra patients to check in on at the hospital.”
“Nonsense. You do important work. I can wait,” Mom said with a smile of her own before planting a kiss on my cheek. “I’m glad you’re both here. We need to talk about all the press you two are getting. They’re asking me questions I can’t answer, considering I haven’t even met my son’s girlfriend until now. Well, unless you count that one other time,” she added with a wink, and Sutton turned bright red.
“Let’s not,” Sutton said, and my mother laughed.
“Agreed. Let’s go into the sitting room,” Mother directed.
Sutton shot me a look that told me she thought our house was over the top, but it was all I’d ever known. This shit was normal to me.
I reached for Sutton’s hand, intertwining it in my own as we followed my mother through the doorway and into my favorite room in the house. The fireplace was lit, and the window shades were up, highlighting the city.
I used to sit in here and stare out the windows after my dad had passed, watching all of the New Yorkers wander around in a daze. It wasn’t the same after 9/11 happened. We were broken, but it felt like we were all broken in the same way. I was lost then, but so was everyone else. For a moment, our world went dark; all the light was replaced with something hazy and blurred. Eventually, we’d all come back to life, together, in unison.
I felt a small tug on my hand, and I realized that Sutton had stopped walking. She was looking at the framed pictures on top of the fireplace mantel.
“Is that your dad?” She let go of my hand and leaned in close.
“Wasn’t he handsome?” My mother’s voice filled the air, a mixture of pride and sorrow.
I wondered how often she came into this room now that I no longer lived here.
“He was.” Sutton stumbled on the past tense of the word. “You look just like him.”
I inhaled quick. It was sharp, and it stabbed. I knew I resembled him, but it had been a long time since anyone had said it out loud. Years maybe.
My mother moved to her reading chair, and I noticed there was a cup of tea sitting on the table beside it. She waved a hand toward the two-person lounge for us to take. Sutton sat first, and I sat unbearably close to her, our thighs pressing against each other, making my mind instantly wander. I placed my hand on top of her leg and left it there, trying to hide the fact that I wanted to move it all the way up until I landed on the place that would give her the most pleasure. That was what two people enamored with one another did, right?
“Do you want a drink? I can have something brought in,” my mom asked as she sipped her tea.
Sutton shook her head. “I’m actually okay,” she said, and I agreed because it seemed easier.
“Are your parents still married, Sutton?”
I didn’t know the answer to the question my mom had asked, so I paid attention to Sutton’s response, watching her nod at first before adding, “They are.”
“How lovely. That’s no small feat these days.”
“They seem happy.”
“Where are they? Here in New York somewhere?”
Sutton let out a laugh. “No. They live outside of Boston.”
My mom’s expression shifted slightly before she composed herself. If I didn’t know her as well as I did, I would have missed it completely. But I noticed it all—the wince, the legs crossing and then uncrossing, the smile that appeared genuine but really wasn’t. Sutton was an outsider who lived far away from her family.
“I take it, you don’t see them very often?”
“Unfortunately, no. With my schedule at the hospital, I don’t have many days off. And they both work.”
“They must miss you.”
“I miss them too,” she said with a soft smile, and I leaned over, planting a kiss on her cheek. She looked surprised or caught off guard before her hand gripped my chin and her thumb ran across it like she’d done it a thousand times before.
“So, tell me, how’d you two meet? I mean, aside from that dreadful night at the gala.”
“Mother,” I chastised her. Didn’t she promise to put that night aside?
