“It’s twenty-three seventy-two,” she tells me.
“Sorry.” I drop the cigarettes onto the counter and reach into my thigh bag for my wallet. Gesturing toward the shelf behind her, filled with rows and rows of various types of nicotine, I say, “Actually, let me grab some of those patches, too, if you don’t mind.”
After paying for all of my items and carefully securing the bag to my bike, I flip closed my visor and get back on the road, headed for home.
That’s where my mind should be; home.
But grief doesn’t work like that. It doesn’t care that my partner is at home, grappling with the mortality of a father he’s spent as long as I’ve known him swearing that he hates. Wishing him dead. Willing the swiftest and most thorough karma in his direction, however it may choose to deliver.
It doesn’t care that my focus should be on home.
It’s pulled me deep into my own loss and it wants me to settle in there.
The house is quiet when I step back inside. Tripp is seated on the couch, anxiously drumming his knuckles against his knee while Julia lovingly leans against him, her hand trailing up and down the length of his forearm.
She offers me a shake of her head – Brody hasn’t called him yet – and I nod in understanding before tossing the shopping bag onto Tripp’s lap.
Drumstick springs to life at the sound of the crinkling plastic, and as his favorite person stands to excuse himself for a cigarette, the cat follows as closely behind as he’s able to, letting out a disappointed yowl when the door slides shut between them as Tripp steps outside.
“I keep wondering how I would feel in his shoes,” Julia finally tells me to break the quiet. “I don’t think I hate my parents for what they’ve done, but I’m not sure if I love them, so…”
“You do.” Using my head to gesture toward the back yard, I add, “So does he. That’s why this is so hard.”
The two of us watch through the glass door as Tripp taps off the ash from the end of his cigarette, bringing it to his lips again for another drag. Julia’s hand slides into mine, her fingers locking with my own as she offers a squeeze.
“Are you thinking about when you got the call?”
“I’m the one who made the call,” I correct her with a shake of my head. “I’m thinking about the things I said to them thatnight, because I didn’t want to drop my little sister off at her friend’s house before I went out with mine. I’m thinking about the fact that I knew that, even though I was mad at them, I loved my parents. And I’m worried that he won’t figure out that he does, too, until after his are gone.”
“I’m worried about that, too,” she admits. She’s quiet for a few breaths too long before saying, “Jefferson was nice to me a couple of times, early on. I think he was just glad that Tripp had brought home someone who was in the faith. Molly was alwaystoosweet; it was like she was trying too hard. My parents loved me until they didn’t, but Tripp’s…”
I pull her into my arms, pressing my lips to the top of her head as her emotion swells. It’s hard to know what to say or how to even try to put myself into either of their shoes right now.
I know loss. I know regret all too well. I don’t know what it feels like to have ever, even for a minute, doubted my parents’ love for me. From the first breath that I took to the final breath my parents took, I was loved. Irina was loved. There was never any question in that.
“I’m gonna cook something,” Julia says with a sniff as she pushes her body off of mine. “Food is good in times like this, isn’t it?”
I can’t help but to let out a laugh. “Do you even know how to cook?” I tease her.
“Edie sent me a recipe book and a bunch of bakeware after our wedding,” she tells me. “I can figure it out.”
As she makes her way into the kitchen, likely to dig through the cabinets to find out if she even stillownsthat book, I aim myself toward the back door.
Tripp is seated on the edge of the integrated planter, bouncing his phone against his knee with a look of frustration on his face.
“No news?”
He shakes his head.
“I’m trying to call my brother,” he tells me.
“What, he’s not answering?”
“It’s Nash, he never answers when I call him.” Pulling a fresh cigarette from the pack sitting next to him, he drops the filter between his lips with a shake of his head.
“Brody won’t try, because he thinks it’s useless – or maybe it just hurts too damn much. Edie can’t stomach the rejection, and Graham…we’re not supposed to talk to him about Nash. ‘It upsets him to hear about a brother he’s never met,’” he says, using his fingers to make quotation marks in the air. “When he was little, the kid’d cry every time we said Nash’s name around him.”
As he brings his lighter to the end of the cigarette, I heave a breath and settle in next to him. My hand runs high along the length of his inner thigh, and I press my lips to the side of his head, kissing the small piece of ink which sits at his temple.
