“How long has your mother been sick?” he asked.
She opened the refrigerator and pulled out two cans of Coca-Cola. She handed him one and popped hers open, taking a healthy sip before leaning back against the counter and crossing her arms over her chest.
“She started showing signs about five years ago. She would go to the grocery store and forget why she went there. Or she would ask the same questions several times a day, sometimes only a few minutes after she’d asked it. In the beginning it wasn’t anything that would raise a red flag, but it soon became apparent that something wasn’t right. I put her in Mossy Oaks three years ago, just a few months after my dad died.”
She shook her head, staring at the floor. “It killed me to do that. I felt like such a failure. After everything she and my dad had done for me, I pay her back by putting her in a home.”
“Not just any home,” he said. “You put her in the care of people who know how to deal with her illness. You did the responsible thing.”
“It didn’t feel like it at the time. It felt as if I was shirking my responsibility.”
She finally looked up at him again, and the sheen of tears glistening in her eyes tore at Jamal’s heart.
“I just couldn’t handle her on my own.” Her voice trembled. She shook her head, wrapping her arms around her middle. “I would come home and find dinner burned beyond recognition, or I’d find her wandering the neighborhood. Once, she took a trowel and uprooted all the flowers in Mrs. Jacobs’s landscaping.” She sniffed and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “I was afraid she would burn the house down, or wander somewhere and get hurt.”
“Taking care of an elderly parent is a tough job,” he said.
“Did that woman look elderly to you?” Phylicia practically shouted. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just so unfair. She’s only sixty-two years old. She’s in tip-top shape, but her mind is completely gone.”
Jamal had tried to maintain his distance; give her the space she needed. But as soon as he saw the tears start to roll down her cheeks, he pushed away from the kitchen island and was at her side. Relief sank into his bones when she allowed him to wrap his arms around her.
She buried her face against his chest, her shoulders shaking with her silent sobs.
“It’s as if I’ve lost both of them,” she murmured.
“I’m so sorry,” Jamal whispered against her hair. He smoothed his hands up and down her back, providing comfort the only way he could. “You and your mother were close. I could tell just by looking at the two of you today.”
“When I was in grade school, she would just show up out of the blue with a pan of brownies for the entire class. It made me very popular,” she said with a soft chuckle.
It was the first hint of levity Jamal had heard in her voice in weeks. He loved hearing her laugh.
“I miss having my parents in my life,” she continued. “We were such a close family. Mom considered herself the disciplinarian, because she said I had my dad wrapped around my little finger from the minute I was born.”
“Did you?” he asked.
“Oh yeah. When it came to my dad, I could get away with just about anything.” She sniffed and wiped the cheek that wasn’t nestled against his chest. “I swear I would give anything to take back that last conversation we had. Not a day goes by that I don’t regret it.”
Jamal pulled her slightly away so he could look her in the eyes. “You know he probably forgave you the minute you walked away from him, right?”
“I know he did,” she said. “That’s just the type of person he was. But it doesn’t change how I feel. I hurt him. And it just kills me that the last words we shared were filled with so much anger.” She looked up at him, her eyes pleading and filled with self-reproach. “Don’t make the same mistake I made. I know you and your dad don’t see eye to eye, but living with this kind of regret is soul sucking. You need to talk to him. Just get it all out in the open and forgive each other. It’s not worth this kind of pain.”
Jamal’s back stiffened, but he neither acquiesced nor dismissed her plea. Instead, he gently lowered her head back onto his chest and trailed his hand along her hair.
He stood in the middle of her kitchen for a long, unhurried stretch of time, holding her, infusing strength, providing solace. After a while, Phylicia disengaged from his embrace. She swiped at her tear-streaked cheeks and grabbed a paper towel, using it to wipe her face.
“I’m sorry about that,” she said, pointing to the spots of moisture she’d left on his shirt.
“No need to apologize.”
She looked so exposed, so vulnerable, that Jamal wanted nothing more than to pull her into his arms again.
God, he wanted to hold her. His body burned with the remembered feel of her against him.
Less than two feet separated them as they faced each other, and the charged air circulating in that space was saturated with a bevy of unspoken emotions. But the one that surpassed everything else was desire.
He felt like a complete dog, wanting her the way he did after everything she’d been through today. But he couldn’t help it. His body yearned for hers, for the comfortable bed just down the hallway, for the pleasure they could both give each other if only they could erase the tension from the past few weeks.
God, how he wished they could go back to the afternoon when they’d explored each other’s bodies underneath that oak tree. What he wouldn’t give to eradicate what happened when they’d returned to the Victorian to discover her mother’s painting room destroyed.
