“Singapore? That’s lovely.”
He’d told her about his upcoming trip on their last call, but she hadn’t remembered. “What about you, Mom?” he said instead. “Are you staying home for a bit?”
She shook her head. “Heading to Portugal tomorrow, actually.”
That was another thing about his mother. She never stayed put in one place for long—instead always off to some other corner of the globe, whether it be a friend’s house in upstate New York or a beach in Thailand, as if running away from the haunting of old memories. It was something she’d done even when he was young.
But he just said, “Have fun. Do you have new cash for the trip?”
“I’ve got it.” She tapped her side where he couldn’t see, as if to reassure him.
He nodded. She couldn’t bring herself to touch bills with wrinkles in them, something that had once stranded her in Paris until he could fly to her to help out. “What about your medications?”
“I’ve got everything. You don’t need to worry.”
“Okay.”
“You’re there alone?”
He glanced to his side, to the adjacent balcony that led into Sydney’s room. “Not exactly.”
“I thought I saw someone in the room behind you. Are they nice?”
He looked over his shoulder, realizing that his mother could see the sleeping figure of Gavi in the rumpled bed. He turned the phone a bit. “It’s just Gavi. And she’s got her own bed. We’re not back together.”
“Well, you have a nice time there,” his mother said, in the way shehad of answering him without quite listening to him at all. “Don’t worry too much about the book. And be safe.”
He smiled a little. “You too.”
They hung up without another word. Winter usually tried to say “I love you,” although he didn’t often hear it back, and tonight, he felt too weary to even try. So instead, he just let his mother hang up first, which she always did. Her virtual figure disappeared, and he was alone again on the balcony.
His gaze went to the glass domes at the bottom of the hotel, the all-indoors botanical gardens called the Gardens by the Bay. By day, he could see the lush field of green beneath the dome, the hundreds of thousands of plants that lived in the futuristic, air-conditioned space. At night, treelike sculptures nearby were lit up, giving him the impression of underwater, bioluminescent creatures.
I’m not really going far,his mother used to say when he was still a kid. She would disappear on her trips and leave him on his own for days.I’ll be back in no time.
Then she would be gone, and he would go to school alone, walk home alone, forage for frozen dinners in the fridge and eat alone. Sometimes, he’d sleep over at a friend’s house. Other times, he’d bring his blanket and pillow and sleep on the old couch in their backyard, where he would pretend he was camping. Still other times, he would dial his older brother’s former phone number, daring to let it ring a couple of times before anyone picked up, then end the call and tell himself that Artie was still alive, still would have answered had he stayed on the line longer.
If Artie hadn’t died, would his mother be more attentive to Winter now? Would she be more curious about how he was doing, call him more often, congratulate him instead of needing him to remind her about what was happening in his life?
Maybe not. Artie had always been their mother’s favorite, her belovedfirstborn, the boy she’d had with a man she’d loved. Then she’d lost that husband and gotten pregnant with a man she’d ended up hating, had married him anyway, and had tumbled into the depression of a new baby and a horrible second husband. That wouldn’t have changed, had Artie lived.
But then Artie had died, had been killed overseas, and his mother had lost herself—as well as the shreds of devotion she’d given to Winter.
Winter shook his head and grimaced. It didn’t matter, anyway. He knew he loved her all the same, and that she loved him, in her own way. Still, he let himself feel her absence. He let himself feel the absence of his brother. And he let himself feel that familiar suffocation, the feeling of wanting to talk to someone else, to let out some of the emotions bottling up in his chest.
His phone buzzed. He was too scared to look at the screen, for fear it might be Claire warning him about some other bombshell that had been leaked from the tell-all book. Instead, he let it buzz until it went silent again.
A movement in his peripheral vision made him turn his head.
It was Sydney, leaning against her balcony in a T-shirt and baggy shorts.
They looked at each other at the same time, then blinked in unison, surprised. The sight of her cut through Winter’s brooding feelings, and he felt himself smile a little.
“Jet lag?” she said.
He shrugged. “You?”
“Checking out the view,” she answered, nodding down at the city.
