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“I’m awake, Henley. Just come in.”
I crack the door open slowly. “It’s not Henley, Mom.”
“Micah.” She gasps out my name, perhaps not even noticing that I’ve called her something I’ve refused to call her since I was a teenager.
The way she sits propped up in bed amid a cloud of pillows is an eerie reminder of Cecile. It’s two o’clock in the afternoon but she wears pink silk pajamas and her legs are covered by a fake fur blanket. She lowers the tablet in her hand and blinks behind a pair of gold-framed glasses I’ve never seen her wear. I didn’t know she needed glasses at all.
“Is it all right if I come in?”
“Yes, I can spare a minute.”
She can SPARE a minute?
I’ll just have to let that one go by. Hell, I didn’t come here to find things to get annoyed about.
My mother watches me drag a hideous gold chair away from the wall. I’m sure she’d like to order me to be nicer to her ugly designer furniture but at least she holds the words back.
Taking a seat, I appraise my mother for the first time in a long while. She looks about as exhausted and unglamorous as I’ve ever seen her. Unlike her husband, she doesn’t glance at the place where my hand used to be. In fact, it seems like she deliberately avoids noticing the void hidden by the cuff of my flannel shirt.
“How are you doing?” Yeah, it’s a dumb question but I’m at a loss how else to open this.
She looks down at her hands. A couple of her fake nails are missing. “Charlotte wants to quit ballet. She keeps asking to play soccer. Tess didn’t come with you?”
“Nope, she’s downtown helping her uncle clean out some shit from the mayor’s office.”
A nod. “I’m sure this ordeal has been excruciating for her. But I will set up an appointment for her with Layla at the club’s spa. She works absolute wonders on the massage table.”
“Great. I’ll pass the message along.” I will. And Tess will probably laugh.
Silence ensues.
I wrack my brain for something relevant to say. “Turns out you can sell artwork online. Tess set up a website. I slapped some of my stuff on there and I’m already getting orders. Customized logos and shit.”
“Oh, I didn’t know you could…” She trails off with a limp gesture.
“Yeah, I can still draw.” I hold up my left hand. “Ambidextrous, remember?”
“Yes, I should have remembered that. Idoremember that.”
“Maybe I could show you my work sometime.”
She nods. “That would be nice.”
I point to the tablet in her hands. “Were you watching something?”
My mother looks down. “No. Well, not really. I was looking at old movies.”
“Like black and white old movies?”
“Not quite that old.” She smiles faintly. “Old videos of your father.”
News to me. I assumed she’d long ago destroyed any visual evidence of Ethan. “I didn’t know you had any.”
“I have pictures too. In a box in my closet. I should give them to you.” She looks down and navigates the tablet. She finds what she’s looking for and sighs before passing it over. “A family vacation. You were six months old here.”
I’m unprepared for the intuitive recognition that hits me when I look at my father. I can identify the view of Lake Poppy in the background as the sun sets. My father sits on the edge of a short wooden pier with me in his lap and points to the water.
I see myself, not in the infant yawning and staring at a scene he’ll never remember, but in the span of my father’s broad shoulders and the way he cocks his head.
