“Wow, Mom, that’s so unlike you to rent here,” Will said, causing my heart to plummet to my stomach.
“Like June said, it’s temporary, just until I find something suitable in Riviera.”
“What happened to our apartment?” Lennox asked just as I pushed the cabana’s door open.
“Mace got on my last nerve. He continued to ignore the drain issue and raised the price fifteen percent.” This was only quarter true. Lying was becoming my second nature now. I had practiced these lies in my head for two days, and I hardly blushed as I uttered them. When the going gets tough, the toughs get to lying …
When they all put their bags in the rooms, Stephanie handed me a wrapped gift. “A little something,” she said, smiling and blushing.
“Oh, thank you! You didn’t have to.” I took the package. “Should I open it now?”
“Yes, please.”
A set of a wooden keychain and a half-round welcome mat in sage green and white was rolled inside, tied in a blue ribbon. I unfolded it. “New home. New beginning. New memories. Welcome home,” the beautiful cursive text read.
“This is … perfect,” I said, tears congesting my throat, and not just because of the beautiful gesture. I hugged Stephanie again. “Thank you so much.”
Will was beaming next to her.
“I have something for you, too,” I said, reaching over to my bag and handing her the small box I had bought yesterday. “Sorry, boys, nothing for you except hugs, kisses, and your favorite home-cooked dish—eggplant lasagna!”
Stephanie opened the box, Will hovering over her shoulder, and found the delicate, gold-filled, Y-shaped necklace with the tiny freshwater pearl at the tip. I watched as their eyes lit up and exhaled in relief. I had been so worried about what to get her, as I had never bought a present for my kids’ dates; they had never dated anyone long enough for that. With my humble means, I could hardly afford even that inexpensive jewelry but had fallen in love with it the moment I had seen it at the gift shop on Ocean.
After the thank yous, and hugs, and teary eyes, they all hung around me as I took out the ingredients for our lunch. The space was small, but they helped with chopping and mixing the salad, standing at either side of the table, elbow to elbow at the counter, telling a million stories about their courses, professors, life on campus. They were completing each other’s sentences, taunting and laughing. I didn’t understand all their inside jokes, but the warmth inside me at their happiness could have cooked the dish we were making all by itself.
Family.
I had missed it so much. It suddenly struck me that, at my age, I had lived almost the same number of years with them in my life as without them. I was twice their age. I couldn’t imagine my life without them.
As I listened to their chatter and focused on the food I was making, my thoughts floated to their father, who had voluntarily missed all of this in his life. From there, my thoughts drifted to the man inside the house who had never had that in his life.
What had it meant for him to be a nineteen-year-old student, alone in a foreign country, with no family warmth? What had it meant for the child he had been, to be cast away between houses, schools, and countries? Looking at my children, I felt it more acutely than I could have grasped it at the time.
“What are you thinking about, Mom?” Lennox asked.
I was thinking of the two sets of Lego Duplo he and his brother had played with and the man I was about to ask to join us for lunch.
“That you guys have done enough work here and that you should all go outside and enjoy the pool while I put this in the oven and take care of a few things,” I said.
Lennox and Will, unidentical even in their hair color, smiled identically and jumped on the opportunity, along with Stephanie.
In five minutes, they were running outside in swimsuits, and I heard the splashes they made and their cheers as the three of them jumped into the pool.
I put the lasagna in the oven, dressed the salad, and took out the platter of cheese and Italian bread I had bought earlier that morning. Feeling like a big spender, I waved at the kids in the pool as I carefully crossed the wet deck toward the house.
Despite the noise they were making outside, which drowned any other sound, I closed the French doors behind me.
“Oliver?” I called. The kitchen and the two living rooms were empty. “Oliver?” I repeated.
“Up here,” I heard him from a distance.
Hesitantly, I went upstairs.
The room at the top of the stairs that had been bare the day I had first arrived at the house after losing my half-room at Sandy Hills was fully made up. There was even a vase of wildflowers on the vanity table. My hand threw itself up to cover my mouth again. Was he trying to torture me? Because it was working. He made me crave the man he insisted on barricading inside.
Oliver stepped out of his bedroom. “I was on the balcony,” he said. “Like it?” He gestured with his chin toward the room I was standing outside of.
“All of it. The pool, too. You didn’t have to.”
