“I don’t know!”
Her father sighed. “Mia, you need to settle down. You’re getting way too worked up and emotional over this.”
“WhenamI allowed to get emotional about stuff? I’m genuinely curious when this will ever be allowed. I have feelings, and I should be allowed to feel them.”
“Do you not want to go? Is that what you’re trying to tell me? You want to stay here and live with him? Doing what? Working in a coffee shop? Will that make you happy?”
Her eyes dropped to the handful of hangers in her hands. “What if…what if going to this university isn’t going to make me happy?”
“How do you know? You haven’t even done it yet. You have to give it a chance.”
Mia released a long breath, sinking to the floor. She took in all the chaos created inside her bedroom, both in terms of the physical and emotional. Her chin settled into a hand, staring at nothing in particular. “I told Mom once that I didn’t want to continue with my studies, but I was too scared to tell you, so I just kept going through with it anyway.”
After some quiet moments passed, he asked, “Why would you be scared to tell me?”
“I knew it would make you upset.”
“Of course, I would be upset. Do you know how much money we’ve put into this? But you should have told me. We would have figured something else out. It’s still not too late and you can go to law school. You know that’s what I wanted for you all along. You can follow in the footsteps of your old man.”
“Dad.” The word slipped from her lips, but there wasn’t anything there to follow it. She wanted nothing more than to crawl into a cave and live in her own solitary existence for a spell, to savor one period of no disappointments or expectations.
“Okay, so you don’t want to do that either. What exactly are you looking for, Mia? If you think I’m going to sit by and say nothing while you ruin your life, I’m telling you right now, I won’t be able to do that. And you know your mom wanted more for you, too. We both did. Maybe in five years you’ll realize staying here, working in a coffee shop, was also a mistake and you’re still unhappy. At least give yourself the chance of living up to your potential. I’d like to think I raised someone who could do more than flip burgers or serve coffee.”
It was those final words when everything stopped for Mia, and her view of the world became a flat straight plane of inevitability.
She blinked away the emotions, and began gathering her clothes again. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I’m going to Texas. Can you pick up some boxes for me whenever you go out?”
There wasn’t anything left to do but pack her things.
Chapter Thirty-Four
She had left.
Ross knew she had left because of the single text message she sent him. The same one he had yet to respond to. In the weeks following Mia leaving, Ross retreated into his workshop. The bitterness, from once again being deemed unworthy, seeped into his bones. He was left with the familiar pain caused by everything he didn’t have and would never have.
Life was a fucking tapeworm.
He had almost forgotten it was latched onto his body like a backpack. That was his fault really. His fault for thinking it could ever be anything different. His fault for allowing himself to fall for some of Mia’s optimism, to believe he could capture and hold onto some of that light. He wasn’t meant to have any of it.
Conversations with Luna didn’t help. Sales made by Aanya didn’t help. Hermes being in relatively good health didn’t help. He sat at the office computer, his jaw locked and hardened into place, and attempted to lose himself in his work, to force himself to care about another online sale to fulfill, to not think abouther.
When his chair rolled backwards as he bent to retrieve something from a bottom drawer, it collided with one of the box towers surrounding his desk, almost setting off a domino effect inside his office. Quick reflexes grabbed the cardboard, but the top box toppled to the floor, spilling its contents of ancient paperwork.
“Goddammit!” Another string of curses fell from his mouth as he roughly shoved the items back in the box. He was sick of it. Sick of the boxes. Sick of this office. Sick of all of it. There was a temptation to fling the box across the office and shred everything with his bare hands, to release every frustration he had ever felt in his life.
“Shit!” An angry red slash appeared on his thumb. Like going through everything wasn’t enough, he had to suffer a papercut on top of it.
There was a soft knock. “Is everything okay in there?” Aanya asked through the closed door.
“Yeah. Just a small accident.” He lifted the page as he sucked the pain from his thumb. The printout was off-white from age but there was the familiar fuzzy green caterpillar sticker in the corner.Perfect Attendance for First Grade. Awarded to Ross Manasse.
Good job, buddy, his teacher had said. Yeah. Good job at being able to occupy a desk for one hundred and eighty days. Not that he had much of a choice. His grandfather didn’t accept many excuses when it came to missing school. Even then, it was an award for the bare minimum and one more item belonging in the trash. He was about to turn to the small shredder beside him, but something else captured his attention.
He overturned an old photograph, one taken on Victor’s digital camera. He hadn’t remembered seeing it before or maybe he’d forgotten it. A brittle piece of tape was stuck at the top, as though it had at one point been hung on the office wall. The image had been snapped inside the workshop. His grandfather was in the center, framed by seven-year old Ross and four-year-old Luna. Young Ross held up his perfect attendance certificate with one scrawny arm, his bright smile was gapped and toothy. His little naïve mind had been completely unaware of the academic frustrations awaiting him in the future.
But the smile on his grandpa’s face somehow also took him aback. He was beaming and had his arms around each grandchild while in his favorite place in the world, the workshop. His grandfather looked like a man who had everything he ever wanted. It didn’t make much sense. Victor Lanza had experienced his own devastating losses in life: a wife who died of cancer, a daughter and son-in-law whose lives were cut short due to an accident, and another daughter who moved across the country to embrace a life without him.
He also didn’t look as old as Ross remembered. The man, who appeared to be in his early fifties, still had most of his dark hair, his back was still relatively straight. He was just a man who kept them going the best he could. And he sat on the stool in his workshop, wearing the leather apron and beaming at the camera.
