“Jocelyn.”
She jerked at my dad’s voice. In my entire life, I had never heard my dad call my mum Joss, like everyone else did. She wasalways Jocelyn orbabe. Dad gave her a meaningful look. “Let her be.”
Mum bristled. “I’ll tell my daughter I’m worried about her if I want to.”
“She just got here. At least let her have a glass of wine first.” He gave her a teasing smirk, and I felt her relax a wee bit.
“Fine.”
Aunt Hannah crossed the room to hand me the glass. Tall, blond, and curvy, she was a knockout who seemed to age backward. She was also one of the kindest people I’d ever met. Although I was good at hiding it, I’d hero-worshipped her as a child. Her husband Marco was, like Mum, an American transplant. He’d moved from the US as a teen to live here with his grandparents. He and Hannah were friends who went their separate ways and then reunited in their twenties. Marco was reserved but laid-back and movie-star gorgeous. In fact, Elodie had begged us to get a family photo a few years ago that included everyone currently in the room, plus Dylan, Will, and Bray, and the photographer couldn’t stop talking about what a ridiculously good-looking family we were.
That might be true, but these people were more than their shells.
I had a beautiful family because they were good and loyal and true. And I wanted nothing more in life than to live up to them, to make them proud.
“Thanks.” I gave Aunt Hannah a warm look as I took the glass of wine and considered Mum. I knew her pestering came from a place of love and concern. I shrugged off my stressy impatience and kissed her temple. “I’m fine, Mum. Promise.”
The truth was while I felt safe telling my parents almost anything, I’d never been comfortable with the idea of admitting to them when I couldn’t handle something. Mum had literally lost her entire family at fourteen and yet she’d braved an oceanto start over in Edinburgh. She’d forged a marriage that blew me away to this day. My parents might disagree and were both passionate people, but never once had I been concerned that their marriage was in trouble. They were solid as a rock, and I’d known that growing up.
Friends’ parents had divorced all around me, and I’d realized how comforting it was to know my parents weren’t going anywhere. Mum had juggled being a present wife and mother with building a successful writing career, all after having suffered unimaginable loss.
Then there was Aunt Ellie. Before I was born, she was diagnosed with a brain tumor and she’d made a successful career and life for herself, too, despite the anxiety she’d been left with from having the tumor and going through brain surgery. Thankfully, the tumor had been benign, but Mum had told me how scared they all were when they didn’t know how bad it was.
And Aunt Hannah … she’d confessed to me a few years ago that she’d had an ectopic pregnancy as a teenager. The child had been Uncle Marco’s, but he hadn’t known about it and he’d left Scotland. Hannah had been terrified to lose another child, but she’d fought through that fear and had gone on to have her kids and teach a whole bunch of others as a high school English teacher.
I hadn’t escaped my own difficult times. I’d known loss too. But if these incredibly strong women who had helped raised me could do all that, then I was ashamed to think I might not be able to cope or succeed like they did and had. There was a part of me, no matter how irrational, that already felt like a failure for needing to rely on anxiety meds. No matter how many stories or articles I read from other people suffering through anxiety, no matter how I never thought that anyone else was a failure for needing help to manage their anxiety, I couldn’t give myself the same grace and understanding. What the eff was that all about?
Mum looked up at me after I kissed her. “What was that for?”
“Just because.”
Her lips twitched. “You’re getting soft on me, kid.”
“You’re still a pain in my arse.”
“And that’s more like my Beth.” She clinked her glass against mine.
Not long later, we all gathered around the massive dining table my parents had commissioned to accommodate our large family gatherings. When our entire clan got together, there was a minimum of thirty-five people.
We took up one end of it, passing bowls of cheese and salad and salsa to pile on our fajitas. Laughter and conversation danced between us easily, and for the first time in weeks, a wee bit of the pressure on my chest eased. Mum was right. I needed this balance. If I worked, worked, worked, there were no moments of relaxation, of decompressing.
“Got enough cheese there?” Dad teased Mum as she heaped a shit ton on her plate.
She glowered. “What’s it to you?”
“Well, you have been known to fart after too much cheese, and I share a bed with you.”
Everyone but Grandma Elodie and Mum laughed. “Braden!” Grandma Elodie scolded.
Mum’s eyes danced with amusement even as she attempted to hold on to a glare. “For better or worse, Carmichael.”
“True. And I did know about the farting before we got married.”
“Can we stop sayingfartat the dinner table?” Grandma Elodie asked primly.
“Yes, please,” Mum agreed, eyes still on Dad. “And stop acting like I have a flatulence problem.”
“I don’t know … it’s been going on a while.”
