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“Oh wow. That would be cool if we had the only grizzly in Arizona wandering around Moongaze Hill.”
One corner of my dad’s mouth lifts. “Your mom would love that. She had a thing for bears.”
“She did? How did I not know that?” That information slices me open. This feeling thing has its drawbacks.
But no–I want to feel. I want the pain of losing my mom to be present. At least I know I’m alive and caring.
“Oh yes. We took a trip to Alaska once, and she was so excited to see bears in the wild. It gave her such a thrill. I think it had something to do with Grandma. She loved bears, too.”
“Did she see one in the Grand Canyon?”
Supposedly, my mom’s love for Arizona came from Grandma, who took a wild road trip to the Grand Canyon with her college friends in a convertible Volkswagen after graduation in the seventies.
Grandma had never gone back, but she made Mom promise to go and see the Grand Canyon when she was dying of breast cancer. Yes–the same cancer that killed Mom fifteen years later.
“Your grandma? I have no idea,” my dad says. “But your mom said she used to spend the entire visit to the Bronx Zoo in front of the bear exhibit ranting about how bears shouldn’t be kept in enclosures.”
“Oh yeah. Mom used to say that, too,” I remember. The pang of not knowing her morphs into something warmer. Like talking about Mom brings that sense of being loved by her back.
My dad turns his gaze from the window to me. “How was Homecoming?”
“Um…well, Luke and I broke up, but I hung out with another guy, so it ended up okay.”
My dad blinks. “You and Luke broke up…I’m sorry, hon. I didn’t even know that was coming.”
“Yeah, that’s okay.”
“Should I have known?”
“Well, he came out so we could break up in person, which didn’t make sense to me, but what do I know?”
I expected him to be disappointed, since he’s buddies with Luke’s dad, but he just looks at me thoughtfully. “I never really thought you two fit,” he says.
“You didn’t?”
He shakes his head. “No. I felt like he was riding your coattails. He liked your social status and took advantage of your need for a friend while your mom was dying.”
My eyes burn, and I blink quickly at my cereal. I don’t think I realized until this moment how little my dad has been attending to my life. He was so wrapped up in his own grief he had nothing left to offer me.
Now, just to hear his simple observation about my relationship makes me want to cry like a baby.
He reaches across and covers my hand. “Are you okay?”
I swallow down the lump in my throat. “Yeah.” I sniff. The lightness of my recent activities brings a sense of fullness to my heart. “I am okay.”
My old life is definitely dead. Whoever I used to be, whatever Luke was or wasn’t to me, seems irrelevant.
I am a new person now. Maybe I’m not living vibrantly yet, but I’m coming alive. I turned an enemy into a lover. Jumped off a cliff. Found out vampires and wolf shifters exist.
I hear the shower start up in the hall bathroom. Luke is awake.
I can stop avoiding him. We had it out last night, and we’re over. I’m grateful to him for the support he was when my mom was dying, but that’s all. The rest is for the past.
This afternoon, I will drive him to the airport and say my goodbyes. Goodbye to Luke. Goodbye to my old life.
I pick up my phone and text Abe. Is there such a thing as a bear shifter?
Abe
