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“Because one of the few things I do know about you,” she said, her voice reverberating into her cup, “is that nothing gets you more relaxed and inclined to talk like a hot mug of Joe. Now, start from the beginning and leave nothing out.”
I finished my coffee and requested a refill while I worked on getting my thoughts organized, and she waited patiently. I started with how close my mother and I were.The love bandits,she’d call us. I’d stood up to my father for her—whenever he’d decide to come around. And she could never quite get me transitioned to sleeping in my own bed because she was a heavy sleeper, and all I’d have to do was wait for her to drift off before crawling back in. She’d wake up with me tucked into her side, and her nightgown fisted between my little hands. That continued until she married Franklin, until I was able to trust she had someone else who would take care of her like I had, and then I’d set my sights on Cole.
“She was tough, but didn’t hide her vulnerability either. She could get riled up when the moment called for it, and she could be bullheaded when it came down to two things—her causes, and her family.” I set my empty mug on the coffee table. “But there was a softness to her that outweighed it all. It made you want to protect her, to promise her everything.”
“Sounds like someone I know,” she said with a warm smile. I huffed, setting a throw pillow in my lap for something to do. “It’s true. You come alive in the courtroom. And you don’t stand up to Daniel, like ever,unless,” she emphasized, “it has something to do with your work—and maybe your hair. But you won’t allow anyone to stand in the way of your work. And with Cole you morph into this content puppy.” She shrugged. “I can’t explain it. It’s like you forget you’re supposed to be sad. For years, I’ve tried to tap into you. Tried to get to that place where your happiness lives, but one glance in his direction, and poof!” she said a little too loudly, wincing as she waited for a sound of disturbance to come from upstairs.
“I was happy.”
“Maybe. The work we do certainly brings you some measure of joy, but it isn’t the sustaining kind. You were missing something. At first I thought it was because you needed family, and I felt bad for not having enough time in my day to be that for you.” She stopped me before I could argue. “But it turns out it was more than that.”
I blew a breath toward the ceiling, searching for a spot in my life story to continue from. “We didn’t come home at all during our first year at Harvard. Finally, we didn’t need to sneak around, didn’t need to pretend to be stepbrothers when really we were more, and didn’t need to run the risk of upsetting our parents. We weren’t ready to give that up, yet. Not for a couple weeks in the fall, and not for a whole summer at the end of spring semester. Instead, we took winter courses, and studied abroad that first summer.
“My mom and Franklin had been ecstatic. Supported us completely. It was easy enough to get away with it at Harvard. We looked nothing alike, shared an apartment off campus, and never made any friends. We didn’t need any. And college life was much different than high school. Everyone had their own lives, trying to find and make their own way. No one cared about us and what we were doing.” I hadn’t noticed I’d created a huge lull in the conversation until Sofia’s hand brushed over mine along the back of the sofa.
“Our second year we came home more often, but it was when we visited during spring break at the end of our third year that I saw signs that something was off, but they weren’t glaring, red flags, you know? My mother slept a lot that week but blamed it on all the overtime she’d been putting in on getting a new charity off the ground. I remember Franklin hovering over her more than usual.” I cursed, ducking my head in shame for being so blind. “I told Cole we had to come back for the summer, and he agreed.
“Her legs were swollen when we returned, frighteningly so, and she didn’t have enough energy to smile. I lost my fucking mind. They were lying to us, and I’d never been so upset in my life, not even after taking a beating from my birth father.”
“Oh, honey,” she said, scooting closer until our knees touched.
“Dilated cardiomyopathy. It’s a condition where the heart’s main pumping chamber is enlarged. As the chamber grows, its walls stretch, becoming weaker and thinner, affecting the heart’s ability to pump enough blood to the rest of the body. Everything we tried was short-lived. In the end, she needed a new heart.” Thinking back on my mother’s decline wasn’t easy. Her death left an unfillable void in me, and being the cause of it, on the eve of receiving the call about her transplant, left me seeking ways to self-sabotage my happiness, left me running in the opposite direction of joy, and flailing with arms wide open toward pain.
“She made us promise we’d finish school. She didn’t want us hovering over her and waiting for her to survive, because in my mind that was the only possibility. So we went back, and I doubled up on classes with the goal of getting the hell out of there and back to her. We flew home every chance we got. Long weekends and short ones. We took online classes when we could in order to wring every free moment with her we could get.” There were moments where she was okay. I called those life’s small cruelties because they never lasted long, and each one sent me into an even deeper black hole. I ventured to Sofia’s bay window, which was so rich with snow and clouded with frost I couldn’t see through it. It meant I couldn’t see my reflection either, so maybe there was a God, and maybe that was his small mercy, because the last thing I needed to do right then was face myself.
“I finished school ahead of schedule, and left Cole behind so I could be with my mother.” I’d reached the sweat-inducing part of the tragic story. My stomach flipped in on itself, and I gasped through the nauseating, freefalling sensation, breathing and counting well beyond ten.
“I was alone with my mother the night she died. Or I was until Cole arrived from Massachusetts later that night. Franklin had been working late at the office.” His way of coping with the bleakness of our ordeal. “And Maggie—my mother’s friend—I wasn’t sure where she was for most of the day, but she was there when the ambulance arrived.” I realized I’d jumped ahead, so I backed up a few beats in the story.
“I had this urgent need to give my mother my truth. I was tired of hiding from her. I hated myself for it, because no matter how positive I tried to be for her benefit, it felt like I was losing my chance to be honest with her. I didn’t want her dying and not knowing. I wanted to experience her happiness for us. So I told her about Cole and me,” I whispered, dragging a shaky hand over my mouth. “She started wheezing in a panic, and I had to restrain her hands when she began tugging on her oxygen cannula.” I was selfish even then. “Couldn’t I have just hidden it for a little while longer?” I balled my hands at my sides, and exhaled deeply when Sofia circled my waist with her slender arms, pressing her cheek to my back.
“We were her sons. Of course she wouldn’t have approved.Of course not…” I faded off hoarsely. “What was I thinking?”
“You didn’t know. You couldn’t have known. You were under a lot of stress, Jasper. Have some grace for yourself.”
“You’re a mother,” I said, turning to face her. “Would you accept the unacceptable? He was her child. We were her children. My mistake was thinking the absence of shared DNA mattered to anyone but us. That it wouldn’t matter to a woman like her.”
She backed away, conceding with a nod and tightening her robe’s sash again.
“She begged me not to break Franklin’s heart. She said he wouldn’t be okay with it. Said it would destroy him, and he was already losing so much. Shebeggedme. And… And I promised.” I promised I would end it. I’d have said or done anything she asked of me.
“Does Cole know?”
“No,” I said. “Bad enough he had to believe he’d played a role in her death. I couldn’t tell him she didn’t want us together. He believes she’s looking down on us with open approval. He thinks she wants us together.” I chewed on my lip. “I could never take that from him.” So I lived alone with the truth, and it took everything nowadays to look heavenward and not feel her disappointment.
I paced to her mantel, fixing the angle of one of the Christmas figurines before shoving my hands into my back pockets and gazing unseeingly into the fire. “She’d calmed and had fallen asleep under my reassurance I would fix things, and with the added fatigue, she slept even deeper those days. I’d often slip into her and Franklin’s room in the middle of the night just to watch her chest rise and fall.” I shot a glance over my shoulder because Sofia had gone so quiet and so still I’d thought maybe she’d judged and left me stranded with my shame.
“I’m here,” she said, standing where I’d left her, arms wrapped around her middle. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“I went over how I would tell Cole as I waited outside for Franklin’s driver to pull in from the airport with him. How would I break him when he was already breaking? We all were.” My chest caved in as I shrank smaller and smaller, the pain resurfacing and eating a hole through me. “No,” I warned, when Sofia made a move to get closer to me. I didn’t want to be consoled. “It’ll only make me feel worse.”
“Okay,” she said, eyes pooling. I averted my stare because I couldn’t stand to see her love for me. Couldn’t stand that she was sharing in my agony. Things were much better when I suffered alone because I hated to be reminded of what I missed most.
Being loved.
“He was out of the passenger side door before the sedan came to a complete halt. He ran to me and didn’t stop until he’d collided into me. He was what I was missing.Thatwas what I was missing. I–I couldn’t do it. I needed him too much. I needed him right fucking then.”
“Where is she?”he’d asked, taking my hand and pushing inside the house.
