Charlie Hawkins gets a full, unobstructed view of my bare ass. Our eyes connect and he immediately looks away right at his daughter standing right next to me but thankfully now fully clothed.
“Dad!” Terra squeaks and jumps to stand between her dad’s eyeballs and my ass. Sweet girl, protecting my honor.
He shuts the door with a loud thud and through it he calls. “Your mom is outside, Jake. Can you come handle it or do you want me to?”
“I’m on my way! Thank you!” I call back. I turn and look at Terra, while I yank my pants all the way up. “I just need to die first.”
“It’s not the end of the world,” Terra says as she follows me to the bedroom door, down the hall and down the stairs. “We’re adults and we were going to tell them eventually anyway. And better that Dad walked in than my mom who would be driving directly to church right now.”
When we reach the front hall, Lucy is standing in the open front door in her housecoat. “Kelsey, if you do not stop yelling, someone is going to call the police. Plain and simple.”
“I want to see my baby boy! I heard he was in the hospital,” Kelsey replies, not quite yelling but still way too loud for sleepy Ocean Pines after midnight. “I need to know he’s okay.”
Everything inside of me turns to lead. I know this feeling all too well but I haven’t experienced it in almost fifteen years and I would have given more than a kidney to avoid feeling it ever again. But here we are.
Terra puts a hand on my back just under my shoulder blade as I walk up behind Lucy. Charlie is on the porch to the side. His arms are crossed and he looks infuriated but he isn’t saying a word, just scowling at my mom. Kelsey is on the driveway. She’s in a pair of gray sweatpants which are stained and saggy like they’re two sizes too big. On top she’s got on a pale pink sweatshirt with an airbrushed kitten and tulips on it and a ratty beige cardigan over that. There is a lit cigarette dangling from her left hand.
“I’ll handle this Lucy,” I say and she glances up at me, her brown eyes full of concern. I give her a reassuring smile. “It’s okay. Go back to sleep. I promise she won’t wake the neighbors.”
Lucy gives me a small nod and turns to Charlie. “Let’s go, honey.”
Charlie hesitates. His eyes laser-focused on Kelsey. Kelsey doesn’t notice because she’s spotted me as I step out onto the porch. If her eyes could light up they would, but there hasn’t been light in Kelsey Grady’s eyes for probably two decades now. Maybe there never was. Charlie finally backs up and retreats from the porch, joining his wife inside. “I’ll be in the kitchen until I know this is settled.”
I nod.
“Jacob baby? Oh my gosh, it’s so good to see you.” My mother gushes.
“Terra go with him, please,” I ask and she shakes her head.
“I have training in dealing with people with substance abuse and mental health issues,” she whispers to me.
I give her a wry smile. “And I have training in dealing with Kelsey. Besides, you’ll just agitate her. You know how she feels.”
Terra frowns but steps inside with her dad. I close the front door and turn back to my mom. She’s left the driveway now and is stumbling across their front lawn. Luckily, it’s fall so she doesn’t crush the flowers that usually line the path from the driveway to the front door. I walk off the porch to meet her halfway. “Hi Kel … Mom.”
“Jacob, what’s this I hear that you had an operation?” Kelsey asks and reaches out with her right hand, the one not holding the smoke, and touches my abdomen. I step back, she tries to cling to my tank top but doesn’t have a good enough grip, thankfully. “Why do I need to hear this from other people?”
“I didn’t want to bother you,” I lie and try to give her a smile. There’s a faint odor wafting off of her. Stale cigarette smoke, maybe a sweet booze and definitely a lack of deodorant.
“ Still at the park on Cascade,” she says. “The third trailer on the left from the gate. You can come by anytime.”
I nod. “Okay. I’m back now, so we have tons of time to catch up. Don’t need to do it in the middle of the night in the Hawkins’ driveway.”
“Back from the hospital?” she asks. Oh, right. Apparently whoever told her I had been in the hospital didn’t tell her I moved away for almost three years. Or she forgot. I sigh and she notices. “Are you in pain? What happened to you?”
“I’m good. I just…” Lie or the truth? Lie would be easier but I’m not big on lies. “I donated a kidney to someone who needed it.”
Her face contorts, making all the deep lines and wrinkles even deeper. Life has not been kind to Kelsey. My mother was a beauty at one point before I was born. Her hair was jet black, glossy, and wavy. Her eyes, a caramel color, were wide-set and fringed with naturally thick lashes. Her nose petite and straight. Her smile bright and bold. I still have her high school year book photo somewhere in a drawer at my place. It used to be framed on her dresser when we lived together when I was a kid. I took it the first time they hauled me out of her custody and into foster care when I was nine. I never gave it back, and if she noticed, she never said anything. Now she looks at me, the lustrous hair thinning and gray before its time, her lashes sparse, her eyes bloodshot. “Why would you give someone a kidney?”
“Because I care about them and they needed one.”
She doesn’t understand that at all, and it’s so apparent on her face that I almost smirk. How in the world does this woman not understand the concept? She takes a long, deep pull on that cigarette of hers and slowly lets out the smoke as she tries to understand an act of kindness like she’s figuring out Pythagorean theorem. “But you need ‘em.”
“I need one. I had two,” I explain. “Anyway, I am perfectly fine. Doing great. Going back to work soon.”
She frowns. “But why are you living here with these lobster people if you’re fine?”
I used to get annoyed about how she always called the Hawkins family “lobster people” until I told Finn and he’d laughed and said, “It makes us sound like we are literally people sized lobsters waddling around.” If he can make light of her ire, so can I.
