“How did it go tonight? Did you hand the form in with Bob?”
I swallow the lump in my throat and grit my teeth before lying to her. “Yeah.”
That smile that ghosts over her lips almost sets me off. I bite the inside of my lip so hard it hurts.
“I’m so proud of you, baby.”
Fuck, stop.
“I love you, so much,” she says, pulling her hand out from under mine to stroke my face. “Your dad would be so proud of how you’re keeping everything together.”
“Stop it, Ma.” I pull away from her touch and stand up with a harsh scrape of my chair legs on the vinyl floor.
“What’s wrong? What’s happened?”
“Nothing’s happened, everything’s fine,Ma.” I swipe at my face so she can’t see that a few stray tears have escaped. “I just don’t wanna talk about Dad, that’s all.”
“Evan, baby, you’ve got to talk about him sometime. It’ll drive you crazy if you keep it all bottled up. You don’t have to be strong all the time. Your dad wasn’t strong all the time.”
I spin on my heels, a muscle ticking in my jaw. “Yeah, he was.”
She cocks her head. I can’t stand the sympathy in her eyes. “Evan, your dad was a man. He was human. He wouldn’t expect you to be anything other than that.”
Memories of a big man in blue overalls flood to the surface. The smell of his woody cologne and cigarette smoke on his clothes. The warmth of his chest when he’d pull me in for a hug. My chest aches. I can’t look at her anymore. My gaze flits over the table. A pile of new letters. An envelope with a big red banner.
“Is that another final reminder?”
Ma makes a feeble attempt to cover the letters up without looking to see what she’s doing.
“Don’t worry about that. We’ll figure it out.”
She stands, running her hand over my head before putting her arms around me. I’m stiff as she rests her head on my shoulder. Her familiar perfume overpowered by a strong smell of smoke and something chemical, like gin or vodka.
“Get some sleep, okay? I love you.”
“You too, Ma. Go to bed.”
There’s a lump in my throat as she leaves. I try to make a sandwich before bed, but I’m not hungry anymore. I put the knife down mid-spread and hold onto the counter for support while waiting for all the memories threatening to break through to pass.
I’m about to turn my phone off when it lights up withanother message from Nate. It’s late and I can’t sleep, and I know the later it gets, the stronger the desire to call him is. The weaker my resistance. My thumb hovers over the last message as I read the start:
I’m not giving up on you. Not this time, I’m never…
I turn my phone off, shoving it under the pillow before turning over to try and get some sleep.
I don’t thinkanyone’s in the kitchen when I come downstairs the next morning, but then I hear Ma, swearing to herself from somewhere.
“Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!”
“What’s happened?”
She’s on the floor, her head in the cupboard under the sink.
“Sink’s leaking,” she says.
“Here, let me take a look.”
“It’s no good,” she says, getting up and wiping the dust off her knees.
