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I grab the T-shirt I discarded on the coffee table two nights prior and pull it over my head. It smells like tacos. Old tacos.
“I see you’re still as messy as you were in high school.”
“I’ve been busting my butt trying to keep this place afloat. The Inn is in debt because of you. Everyone quit.” I reach for my phone and show her the missed call from the rehab place. “And Darren’s in rehab.”
Her hand goes to her heart, as if the news about Darren physically hurt. Some of the stress I’m so used to seeing in her face returns in the crinkles around her eyes. Guilt nibbles at the edge of my anger.
“Is he ... how is he?”
Some vindictive part of me that wants all this to be her fault is ready to tell her that of course Darren’s not okay. But another part of me, that part that understands needing to escape, that remembers how she tucked us into bed every night, even when she’d barely had a moment to herself all day. “He’s in rehab. He ... he needs a lot of help.”
My mother’s shoulders slump. “I’m glad he’s getting it.”
The man behind her steps up and puts a supportive hand on the small of her back.
“Who are you?” My words come out almost as a growl.
“My name is Mike. Your mother and I met in a photography class at the retreat.” He holds out a hand.
“Photography?”
“Yes, Will. For once, I wanted to follow my heart, follow my passion. The way all those years ago I encouraged you to follow your own.”
“Only after I had no choice.”
Her hands come to her hips, and the look on her face is a mixture of disappointment and heartbreak. Maybe it’s because her old photographs are hanging on the walls, but it takes only a moment to place where I’ve seen that look before—the day she quit her photography class, even though she loved it, because our dad had just died. She stepped up. For us.
Another memory presses forward. The same look of disappointment and heartbreak when I told my mom I’d been rejected from mytop-choice local school and maybe I would push off college for a few years to stay and help her. After that, my mother started leaving film-school applications on the kitchen table. She started conveniently collecting boxes in the garage, which I used to pack up my stuff. She encouraged me in every way to go—I had just been too wrapped up in myself to hear. It’s so clear now, it seems impossible that I was so oblivious.
Mike’s unshaken hand drops in slow motion to his side.
I shake my head to release some of the pressure building behind my eyes. “It would have been nice if you’d told someone.”
“I tried.” My mother’s voice doesn’t rise to meet mine, which makes my hysteria feel out of place and uncalled for.
“You tried. When?”
“Every time I called you. You hung up on me so quickly I never had a chance to tell you how unhappy I was, how I needed a change.”
“You just left, though. You didn’t even check in.” I hear the double standard in my words, and the quirk up of her eyebrows tells me she does too.
“I didn’t just leave. I set everything up, and Terry was here to oversee things.”
“Well, he quit and the Inn is falling apart. We’re so far in debt ...” I gesture vaguely to the suitcase behind her. “If you’d answered my calls, I would have told you that.”
My mother turns to her companion, who looks at her with unfiltered compassion, with a promise in his eyes. She’s not alone. He won’t run, no matter what she admits.
“If I’d answered your calls, I would have come back. I would have dimmed my light, shrunk my dreams, again, to fit into a life that has become too small for me. But, Will, if I did that—again—I would have suffocated the last bit of light I had left inside me, and once that light’s out, it’s impossible to get it back. I just—I saw my future if I stayed here. It was lightless, and we need light. We’re not meant to live ourlives in dark, cramped spaces. Going off the grid is radical, but it felt like the only way to save my light, save my life.”
The sunlight shifts, and my mother’s face sharpens more fully into view. For the first time, I see her.
She sighs and looks me over. “You’re an adult. The Inn was struggling, sure, but Terry was handling the accounts, and he assured me we’d be fine. And Darren—he was in a good place when I left. He even seemed happy. I thought there might even be someone special in his life.”
“But you came back?” I ask.
My mother tilts her head and considers me, as if sizing up whether I can handle the truth.
“A little birdie told me I should. But mainly, it was time. I missed the Inn and Kingsette. I was worried about Darren. And mostly I realized that happiness is mine to claim wherever I am. I love running the Inn, but it doesn’t have to be the beginning and end of my life. Leaving showed me what I was missing here. But also that I want both. A full life.” She brings a hand to rest on Mike’s wrist.
